HLF 2024 is introducing a dedicated stream – ‘Climate Conversations’ – to the festival. This stream is a happy new addition to the festival – that already is committed to the cause.
- Green Festival – HLF has always been a green festival. For instance, for years now, it has sought to be plastic-free, reuse decor and infra, serve guests water in glass bottles, and encourage all attendees to bring their own bottles, amongst other things.
- Critical Conversations – the addition of this stream, however, adds an important layer to the festival – critical conversations about climate and the environment. While conversations about the climate are not new, we believe they require nuanced and intelligent conversations.
- Better informed – As environmental crises surround us, they have also grown more and more urgent. Better informed conversations may impact how we choose to behave in our everyday life – in order to better co-exist with a rich biodiversity of plants and animals that we share our planet with.
- Diverse Themes – Climate Conversations brings some of the most interesting people in the field together – for panel discussions, workshops, exhibitions, film screenings, performance poetry, and more. The diverse themes of this stream reflect the wide experience of speakers – such as biodiversity, climate education, waste management, climate finance, imagining alternative worlds vis-à-vis the environment, nature as a space of learning, and much more.
- Fantastic Speakers – the speakers of the stream include a range of fantastic people in the field, such as writers, academics, poets, filmmakers, journalists, climate investors, illustrators, industry experts, researchers, artists, and more. We look forward to welcoming everyone to participate in these important and engaging conversations.
- EkoGalaxy – this stream is put together by EkoGalaxy – a platform for climate education and engagement – founded by Shreyas Sridharan and Urvi Desai.
The incredible line-up of speakers includes:
- Alina Sen
- Anand Gandhi
- Anita Mani
- Farida Tampal
- Helly Shah
- Kalpana Sharma
- Kobita Dass Kolli
- Maya Chandrasekaran
- Pinky Chandran
- Priyanka Singh
- Rahul Chopra
- Rohan Chakravarty
- Sameer Shishodia
- Shawn Sebastian
- Srivi Kalyan
- Sunayana Ganguly
- Wilma Rodrigue
Climate Action in the Everyday!
Shreyas Sridharan & Urvi Desai
Duration: 50 mins
Number of Participants: 40
Age group: Open for All
🗓 26th January 2024
⏱12:00 am – 12:50 pm
Venue: Climate Conversations
The environmental crisis surrounds us, and yet, we don’t quite seem to know what to do. We forget that there is an interconnectedness in everything we do. Everything we use and throw away comes back to bite us, or our children, in some way or the other. So where do we start? And what can each of us do? In this workshop, we walk you through a zero-waste sustainable lifestyle – at zero cost. The change must be made in our mind, so that we can change our habits and practice mindful sustainability, in our everyday. Join us to understand simple ideas to make a big impact for the better lives of humans, and to protect the biodiversity of plants and animals that we share this planet with.
Interdisciplinary Climate Education: A Workshop on Integrating Climate Change in Your Classroom
Duration: 50 mins
No of participants: 50
Age group: Teachers / Educators
🗓 27th January 2024
⏱12:00 am – 12:50 pm
Venue: Climate Conversations
This workshop is designed to (i) introduce the participants to climate change and its impacts by a climate science expert, (ii) introduce the participants to digital educational tools and innovative teaching practices in their classroom to teach topics in different disciplines using climate-related examples, case studies, and activities and (ii) demonstrate a new pedagogical approach to help improve the understanding of sustainability and climate change among students while simultaneously enhancing their conceptual understanding of topics in different disciplines.
Frameworks of Enlightenment
Duration: 50 mins
No of participants: 30
Age group: Open to All
27th January 2024
3:00pm – 3:50 pm
Venue: Climate Conversations
Have you ever wondered what it is like to engage with someone who thinks about and has read about several deeply complex and important subjects? This workshop is one such opportunity! In this informal conversational workshop with dynamic filmmaker and innovator, Anand Gandhi, the audience may interact with the speaker through ‘prompts’ of different kinds – meta, climate, society, politics, evolution, and games. This may or may not transform into a free-flowing, fascinating, and enduring conversations about neuroscience, the intrinsic importance of games, evolutionary biology, environmentalism, storytelling, science fiction, and lots more.
The Porous Self
Duration: 50 mins
No of participants: 40
Age group: Open to all
28th January 202411:00–11:50 am
Venue: Climate Conversations
Is there really a dividing line between human and nature? And what adventures begin if our boundaries are porous? When we unfold our senses into the five great elements, how does the world as we understand it begin to change.Let’s explore nature and self through art and poetry. Through painting and writing, discover the suffusion of our beings into elements. Let’s reach within our inner landscapes to discover and renew your bonds with all that is more than human.
