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Welcome to the Summerhill Festival Community Forum! 
As the festival grows nearer we are inviting you to join this forum to communicate, discuss and collaborate prior to the event. What would you like to offer at the festival and who would you like to collaborate with?
The Summerhill Festival of Childhood will be hosting projects, workshops, presentations and performances related to art, music, theater, dance, craft, educational and childrearing approaches, psychology, sustainability, community and children’s rights.
One of the most exciting elements of the festival will be the Open Spaces. Every area of the festival will have Open Space opportunities for anyone joining the festival to offer anything they would like to share with others. You can offer a talk, workshop, arrange a discussion, take part in a performance, build something amazing or offer a lesson to someone that wants to learn.
The idea of this community forum is to supply a place for communication and collaborations to start before the event.
We hope you enjoy the experience and we look forward to seeing you at the festival in August.
Summerhill Festival of Childhood 2022 Vision
Name:
The Summerhill Festival of Childhood 2022
Type:
The Summerhill Festival of childhood will be a community and family-friendly event that will bring together many exciting projects, collaborations, workshops, presentations and performances based on art, music, theatre, dance, craft, educational and childrearing approaches, psychology, sustainability, community and
children’s rights for thousands of participants. It will also have an international conference approach and will facilitate seminars, talks and focus group discussions.
Vision:
- Celebrating 100 years of Summerhill School and the inspirations A.S.Neill has given the world. ● Celebrating childhood as a critical period of time for all of us and for the future of humanity.
Mission:
- To strengthen the sense of unity amongst organizations and individuals who are promoting and actively working towards positive change within education, childrearing and community ● To maximize their global impact by functioning as an incubator and accelerator of future collaborations, partnerships, alliances and movements for a more humane and sustainable future for us all.
Values:
Our aim is to celebrate equality, children’s rights, creativity, well being, relieving pressures from childhood and embracing the values of:
- Individuality
Celebrating uniqueness, self-awareness, self-regulation and self-direction.
- Play
Celebrating the importance of free, pure and uninterrupted play.
- Freedom not license
Celebrating unconditional acceptance deriving from equality and the right to be oneself without infringing on other people’s freedom.
- Community
Celebrating the capacity of inclusive and supportive communities to foster personal and social development, sustainability and healthy relationships towards societal change.
- Emotional sincerity
Celebrating emotional honesty as an essential condition for social emotional development and a more humane world.
Festival Principles:
- Inclusion
We welcome everyone who adheres, implements or embraces the values and principles of this festival. Inclusive to any and all educational practices that share some or all of the above values. Inclusive to all who have been a child and wish to enjoy, explore, learn, teach, share, create, or just be.
- Unity
We would like to invite you to join us in a global movement to celebrate childhood as arguably the most important period of time in our lives. It is essential for the future of humanity that we join forces to remove pressures and societal expectations as well as to restore our emotional well-being and global intimacy.
- Creativity
You are welcome to bring your own creative ideas and projects to share with everyone else at the festival. You can bring art projects, sculpture, music, dance, science, literacy and poetry, performances, presentations etc. You are welcome to be inspired and spontaneous, to collaborate and participate prior to, during and after the event. Most importantly, you are welcome to just be yourself and not be creative if you don’t want to.
- Freedom of expression and participation
There is no expectation as to how much you will participate. Everyone will have the freedom to play, to be creative, to teach, to learn, to hang out with friends or just relax and enjoy the atmosphere.
- Self-reliance
The festival will provide toilets, water, food vendors and sleeping options but will not be able to cater for all your individual needs. We encourage you to think ahead and make sure you bring everything you may need to the best of your ability.
- Responsibility (personal, collective, civic)
It will be a communally run festival, therefore it is essential that everyone contributes to the best of their ability in the day-to-day running of the festival. All participants need to, in all circumstances, follow local and national law and continually respect neighbours (inside and outside of the festival) and the local town and area.
- Leaving no trace
Plan ahead and prepare; travel and camp on durable surfaces; dispose of waste properly; leave what you find; respect wildlife; be considerate of other visitors and the local community.
- Ethical trading
Participants are welcome to share experiences, methods and ideas of practice but we would like to make sure that any commercial or trading activity that might take place either promotes the values of the festival or is for charity/community benefit.
The outputs of the festival
More specifically, we anticipate the Summerhill Festival of Childhood to have the following outputs:
- Networking and collaborations amongst people and organizations from all over the world sharing similar values and visions.
- Drawing global attention to the importance of childhood for the life-long well-being of every individual and consequently for our society and Initiating a global campaign around it. ● Producing a Summerhill Festival of Childhood report reflecting upon the current and future developments of education globally.
- Enhancing the outreach of all contributing and supporting organizations’ work and projects through all festival’s promotional mediums and direct interaction with thousands of festival participants and stakeholders keen to learn and get involved.
● Enrichment of participant stakeholders’ (e.g educators, policy-makers, researchers, other professionals, parents etc) insights and practice through their involvement with and experiences at the festival but also of many more stakeholders through the dissemination of the festival outputs after the event.
