Everybody’s talking at festivals of ideas
An excerpt from The Australian October 01, 2011
Greg Mackie may not have shown it, but he was petrified. It was midwinter 1999 and, with just hours to go before the key event of Adelaide’s first Festival of Ideas, ticket sales were lousy, if not disastrous.
The festival — an ideas forum straddling geopolitics, science and the arts — was Mackie’s creation and the first event of its type held in Australia. The well-connected former bookseller and adviser to Adelaide Writers Week had secured funding for his “bazaar of ideas” from state and local governments and corporate sponsors.
