Latest Press Release
A LIFE LESS ORDINARY - TALES OF INNER STRENGTH AND RESILIENCE.
Altered State, the popular Southville talk event started by Patrick Irwin and Al Farquhar at the beginning of this year, have announced their final talk for 2024 and promise to be back with more grown-up conversation in 2025.
At 7.30pm on Tuesday November 19th they are hosting A LIFE LESS ORDINARY - TALES OF INNER STRENGTH AND RESILIENCE in the Hen & Chicken, 210 North St, BS3 1JF. A panel will tell the audience how they have coped when they are up against the wire - on a raft out to sea, in war zones or dealing with severe mental health issues.
Tickets, including student discounts, from here.
The panel will comprise Douglas Roberston, whose family of 6 set sail round the world when he was a teenager in the 1970s. Their boat was holed by killer whales and sank rapidly in the Pacific Ocean, they abandoned ship onto a raft and survived for 38 days, finally being rescued by a Japanese ship. When asked what makes a life less ordinary, Douglas says “having been shipwrecked and cast adrift aged 18, my life was neither hindered by the fear, uncertainty and doubts that people normally feel, nor the adoption of norms. I’ve lived several lives in one and I put that down to my experience on the Pacific.”
Dr. Rachael Craven is a senior anaesthetist for Bristol Royal Infirmary. She is a trustee and UK President of Doctors Without Borders. Rachael specialises in the set up and operation of surgeries in active war and disaster zones. She’s smuggled an entire operating theatre into Syria, she’s worked in Libya and Haiti and dedicated her summer holidays this year to operating in Gaza. Rachael insists “going into war zones was never the aim, the challenge was providing good care with limited resources and eventually stetting up emergency surgical field hospitals. That inevitably meant spending most of my time in conflict zones where these surgical facilities are needed most.”
Dan Beaumont is an endurance athlete and mental health advocate. Growing up on a council estate with an alcoholic father and parents that divorced when he was 6, Dan battled alcohol and then depression. He found his salvation in extreme sporting activity and he’s now a passionate advocate for men’s mental health; he says "adventure and endurance sport have given me a way to handle life’s challenges, showing that moving forward, step by step, is sometimes all we need.”
The host for the night will be award winning author and documentary maker Polly Morland. Polly’s book ‘The Society of Timid Souls: or How to be Brave’ was a Sunday Times book of the year and her last book ‘A Fortunate Woman’ was shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford book prize.
“We’ll hear extraordinary stories from ostensibly ordinary folk” says Paddy and Al adds “we’ll be inspired to be the best version of ourselves when we hear these varied and astonishing tales”. After the talk, the audience can ask questions and the evening concludes with ‘the toolbox’ where the panel will give their most salient piece of advice on how to life a life less ordinary.
Altered State will be back in 2025 and will shortly be announcing their first events for the New Year.
Previous Releases
THE GRASS ISN’T ALWAYS GREENER - GREENWASHING VERSUS CREDIBLE CLIMATE ACTION.
Altered State’s 7th talk takes place at 7.30pm on Tuesday October 22nd in the Hen & Chicken, 210, North St, BS3 1JF.
Tickets, including student discounts, from here.
A month doesn’t pass without another extreme climate event somewhere in the world and as the planet’s temperature rises inexorably. Amid legislative weakness and delay, we’ll talk about what we can actually do in our everyday lives in the face of the looming tipping point; we’ll discuss what action we can take as individuals to effect real green change, how best to exert influence at home and in the workplace and also ask if a green vote is a wasted vote in light of Labour’s supermajority. We’ll call out corporate greenwashing and show how companies can strategise sustainability and better their environmental practice and community impacts.
Our host Eliz Mizon is the Strategy Lead at The Bristol Cable and a freelance organiser for nonprofits. She leads a well versed panel:
Natalie Fée is an award winning environmental campaigner, author and speaker, she founded City to Sea, an organisation to prevent plastic pollution at source. Natalie is the author of ‘How To Save the World for Free’ which looks at sustainability campaigning and how to get involved in activism at no personal financial cost and ‘Do Good, Get Paid’ which explores green career paths that pay. Natalie’s environmental campaigns include a recent initiative with city councils to adopt water fountains to reduce plastic packaging.
Veronica Wignall is Co-Director of Ad Free Cities, a UK network based in Bristol that campaigns to reduce the impact of corporate advertising in public spaces. They call out ads that promote carbon-heavy lifestyles, fast fashion and unhealthy products. Veronica will work to get such advertising banned by the UK Advertising Standards Authority and Ad Free Cities recently succeeded in getting an SUV ad pulled from the public space for being misleading about its emissions.
In 2018 Jessica Ferrow founded the Climate Impact consultancy Twelve, that year being when the climate cognoscenti indicated we had twelve years left to make meaningful change by the tipping point of 2030. Jessica helps businesses craft sustainability strategies and also to attain B Corp certification, a standard that indicates the company’s commitment to social and environmental performance.
Altered State’s Patrick Irwin says “People everywhere want real change. So as well as talking about ways in which we can all make a difference at home, we will hear about strategies to influence the workplace too”.
“The political class are fiddling whilst Rome burns, and it will burn at the rate we’re going, we need to talk”, adds Al Farquhar of Altered State, “we want to show that you CAN do something”.
The audience can ask questions at the end of the talk, which concludes with ‘the toolbox’ where the panel give their most succinct thought on the subject for everyone to take away and spread through their networks.
THE TRUTH ISN’T OUT THERE - THE ERA OF CONSPIRACY THEORY.
Altered State’s 6th talk takes place at 7.30pm on Wednesday Sept 11th in the Hen & Chicken, 210 North St, BS3 1JF.
Tickets, including student discounts, and more information is available here.
Conspiracies are rife again today. We will ask why, what powers conspiracy theories and what effect they have on our communities and our understanding of the notion of truth. We will investigative their sometimes highly problematic nature and ask what this says about us. But some conspiracies are true: there were no weapons of mass destruction, VW did lie about their emissions and not all truthers are hate speech propagators. Many come from a place of seeking to help others or expose wrongdoing. We’ll also look at the effect of the traditional media gatekeepers being usurped by the newly democratised means of digital information flow.
Altered State host Rudy Millard will be joined by an authoritative panel.
Brent Lee is a Bristolian who has come to national attention as a former conspiracy theorist who now campaigns to expose conspiracism and to help people gravitate away from the truther movement. Brent spent 15 years obsessively seeking to uncover what he thought were harmful facts ignored by a complicit mainstream media and state institutions. He started to question the ‘crisis actors’ narrative pushed by Alex Jones of Info Wars about the Sandy Hook school shooting. By 2018 Brent had moved away from conspiracies to seeking to expose them and helping people who had shared his worldview regain perspective.
Sian Norris is the senior investigative reporter at openDemocracy and author of Bodies Under Siege: how the Far-Right Attack on Re-productive Rights Went Global. Sian has written human rights and social affairs stories for The Observer, Times, Guardian, The I and The New Statesman. Sian said “My book and research explores how far-right conspiracy theories bring together racism and misogyny in order to restrict women’s rights.”
Dr. Alessandro Miani from Bristol University’s School of Psychological Science is an expert on the language and proliferation of conspiracy theories. Alessandro says “Conspiracy theories become more popular during societal crises as they fulfil important existential, epistemic and social needs. While they do not necessarily promote anti-science, they can be used to justify anti-science attitudes”.
Al Farquhar from Altered State says “conspiracies have always been with us, but powered today by the way we now digest news, they have gravitated from the naive and eccentric to being often widely accepted, occasionally with problematic and hateful baggage”. Al’s Altered State partner Patrick Irwin adds “we’re teetering on the edge of an era of weaponised misinformation and there is a lucrative market for conspiracies. We need to talk”.
The audience will be able to ask questions at the end of the talk and as with all Altered State events, the evening will conclude with ‘the toolbox’ where the panel will give their most considered thought on the issue for everyone to take away and spread the word through their networks.
Look out for The Altered State, a monthly podcast that features the highlights of our previous talk with Masha Alyokhina and Olga Borisova of Pussy Riot, with added commentary by Patrick and Al.
FROM RUSSIA WITH PUSSY RIOT.
Altered State invite Masha Alyokhina and Olga Borisova of Pussy Riot back to Bristol to talk about preserving precious democratic freedoms at 7.30pm on Wednesday June 26th in the Hen and Chicken, 210 North St, BS3 1JF.
The sense that democracy is under siege is acute. Nationalist and populist movements in the free world seem set on curtailing hard won freedoms whilst one party states and dictatorships are on the march worldwide. We’ll ask what happens to democracy when there’s no opposition, no free media and a servile judiciary. And with the USA approaching a MAGA fork in the road with their election this November, we’ll think the unthinkable and ask: it couldn’t happen here could it? We need to cherish our vote and our freedom of expression while we still have them.
Host Rudy Millard will be joined by Masha Alyokhina and Olga Borisova of Pussy Riot, the anti-Putin feminist art collective. Imprisoned for their notorious punk prayer in Moscow’s Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, which protested against the RussianOrthodox Church’s compliance with Putin. Pussy Riot have continued to speak, perform and stage happenings that give a voice to LGBTQ+ and other minorities and the litany of groups persecuted and trampled on by Putin. Masha says “Democracy is not handed down to people forever by God, but was fought for by people who lived before you. Without your continuation of this fight and without your respect for its importance, it can easily collapse”. Al says that “Pussy Riot are no strangers to Bristol, having performed here several times and we’re thrilled to bring them back for an intimate conversation”. Patrick adds: “Pussy Riot continue to attract attention for their artistic actions across the world and we are delighted to get behind the balaclavas with two of their most prolific members”.
The audience will be able to ask questions at the end of the talk and as with all Altered State events, Masha and Olga will conclude the night with ‘the toolbox’ where they will give their most considered thought on the issue for the audience to take away and spread the word through their networks.