Opinion Festival to introduce new discussion formats this year

TALLINN – On the second weekend of August, the Opinion Festival will be held in the central Estonian town of Paide for the 11th time, and this time new discussion formats will be introduced.

For example, the festival will feature a TikTok house, an attempt to integrate Ukrainian, Estonian and Russian youth, a democracy area, and a hybrid discussion on higher education taking place simultaneously also in Finland and Latvia.

In the idea collection this year, there were many organizations that have not organized a discussion before, and with regard to newcomers, there is more of a willingness to do things in a new way, and not to follow an already trodden path.

The goal of the festival is to develop discussion culture in Estonia. This year there are more inclusive formats in the program, and for the festival visitor, a three-dash system signifying how much it is possible to have a say in each discussion has been added to the program. In the case of discussions with one dash, people can expect a more classic panel discussion, where the listeners can ask questions at the end, but in the case of discussions with three dashes, the contribution of everyone present to the success of the discussion is expected.