Show up: Speak up: Act out

From the founders of the Good Funeral Awards , the UK Speechwriters' Guild and the Ideal Death Show...A New Political Conference

'Every joke is a tiny revolution'

- George Orwell

Carnival gives us permission to question convention, laugh at pomposity and celebrate creative disruption.

In the dying days of summer, in the midst of the UK party conference season, we're hosting a weekend of lively debate, irreverent speech and heretical ideas by the sea.

Think Rocky Horror Show meets the council of Runnymede.

Or The Idler Festival meets the Battle of Ideas.

If you want to change the world, but you don't like the way the other political parties are organised,

this conference is for you.

If you don't just want to listen, but if you also want to be inspired to take part in the political process by organising your own events or sharing your own ideas,

this conference is for you.

If you consider politics to be a fundamentally absurd but somehow noble pastime,

if you like listening to intelligent speakers with different backgrounds,

if you want to find a place where eccentricity and open-mindedness are welcomed,

this conference is for you.

Come to the former spiritual home of Britain's political conferences, where people of all ages and incomes could be accommodated, before political fixers and corporate money sanitised open political debate and made membership meaningless.

We'll bring together the mainstream and the marginal, the old and the new, the top and the bottom.

Unlike other conferences, we choose speakers on the basis of their powerful ideas or their outstanding public speaking abilities.

Let's celebrate just some of the joys of living in 2026:

Losing our jobs to technological innovation

Confinement to our Netflix caves

Running out of money

Navigating a disintegrating political system

Sharing our homes with adult children

Being conscripted into a global war

The medicalisation, atomisation and commercialisation of everything

A world of 24-hour news, where nobody dares to tell you what's actually happening

The impossibility of imagining a better future

And yet..and yet.. somehow we're alive and capable of changing ourselves and the world.

Hear new voices, discover new ideas, meet new people, share Utopian visions, then lose hope and get drunk.

Join us for the perfect antidote to inhibited political discourse.

Let's plot in Bournemouth's answer to the Davos Congress Centre, The Freemason's Hall, with its beautiful rooms, quirky symbols and brand new bar.

Our first event taught us that the first step to changing the world is to be open to wear something different, and the second step is finding some new vocabulary to talk about familiar problems

At the end of the day we'll discover there's no political difference that can't be resolved over a few pints of beer, excellent food and some lewd entertainment.

'So I'll remove the cause…but not the symptom'

- Dr. Frank-N-Furter, Rocky Horror Picture Show

SPEAKERS

Speakers will be added as we recruit them. Obviously we may get cancellations, but we'll do our best to deliver what we promise.

James Sale

James is a management consultant, educator and poet who has had over 50 books published and self-published, the most recent one published by the Bruges Group: Gods. Heroes. and Us, Greek Myths in the Modern Era.

In a world increasingly dominated by technology, materialism, and the relentless march of "progress," ancient myths often seem relegated to the realm of children's stories or outdated superstitions. James challenges this dismissal with a resounding assertion: Greek myths are not only relevant today, but they offer profound insights into the human condition, moral law, and the structures that underpin our civilisation.

ABOUT

There's a good joke about how the Americans think life is serious but not hopeless, whereas the English think life is hopeless but not serious.

Humour used to be a core part of British identity. It was what we did best. It was an antidote to our pompous and well-defined class structures.

It distinguished us from the obsessive and extreme tendencies of our European neighbours.

In recent years the playful, irreverent and pessimistic characteristics of the British psyche seem to have been scorned and repressed.

Nowhere more so than in our political discourse, where irony, wit and humour have disappeared.

At the Carnival of Alternative Politics we praise folly and willingly integrate madness into the programme.

That way we get surprisingly high-levels of intelligent debate.

Carnival is a deeply-rooted ritual in Western societies. It's a healing exercise allowing symbolic breaking of the rules without dismantling the system.

It's a way to deal peacefully with the anger and resentments of the people: an outlet for excess, transgression and rebellion.

For a season every year, it was customary to invert the social hierarchy, mock religious ritual and celebrate death and bodily functions. It's about laughter and letting

Description supplied by the event organiser.