Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) has today unveiled its 2024 theme, Sanctuary, with a program for curious minds on 24-25 August. The home-grown, globally renowned festival returns to Sydney for the first time since 2022, with its twelfth edition set to delight and disrupt Australian audiences across one weekend.
Australia’s original disruptive festival, known for being at the zeitgeist of ideas, FODI will bring thought-leaders and artists from across the globe to Carriageworks’ art precinct. Its line-up, set to be announced in June, will fuel critical thinking, challenge preconception, provide information and spark conversations.
Offering a haven for exploration and a harbour for the curious, FODI 2024’s Sanctuary invites audiences to engage with the ideas behind the headlines of the 24-hour news cycle. It provides a space to spend time with international experts and agenda-setting changemakers, to better understand what is driving change in the world and society for better or worse.
Danielle Harvey, Festival Director, FODI, said:
“FODI is about bringing great talent and great audiences together, creating a place for everyone to meet and exchange ideas – be that on our stages, in our greenrooms, at our functions or in the foyers. Our digital extension of the live event reaches out globally, sharing and provoking conversations around the dinner table and in the media.”
“We know that it’s wild out there. It’s a litany of entrenched ideas, 24-hour news cycles, shallow information and self-censorship. We desperately need a space where we can engage with challenging ideas in good faith. And that’s what FODI is all about this year. It’s an opportunity to hear powerful and provocative speakers from around the world talk on important and rousing topics. And also a space, a sanctuary, where audiences can engage with these ideas in a way that we, unfortunately, can’t in the wild. In our Sanctuary you are safe from hype and safe to listen and to ask questions.”
FODI is an ideas festival for our times: inviting guests to indulge their curiosity, focus their attention and engage with the uncomfortable. The festival has featured over 630 of the most fascinating, fearless speakers and artists the world has to offer. Past speakers include Stephen Fry, Lionel Shriver, Christopher Hitchens, Alicia Garza, Salman Rushdie, Pussy Riot, Marcia Langton, Julian Assange and Germaine Greer.
The Festival is presented by The Ethics Centre, a not for profit that encourages people to examine all aspects of life, and is supported by the NSW Government through its tourism and major events agency, Destination NSW.