Last chance to apply for Living Freedom Summer School
Every generation must renew freedom for its own times! So everyone aged 18 to 30 should join the debate at our three-day residential school in London this July.
It’s the final weekend for applications to Living Freedom Summer School, the annual residential event organised by Ideas Matter. The deadline for applications is next Tuesday, 26 May. If you doubted the importance of participating in this event – or need an incentive to forward this Substack and spread the word to as many young people as possible – then a snapshot of the state of freedom over the past week should be persuasive.
Take the gathering of thousands from around the UK who descended on London last weekend to demand their voices be heard and express concerns over broken borders and a loss of cultural identity. Whatever one’s view of the organisers or their politics at the Unite the Kingdom rally, Keir Starmer’s decision to label attendees as ‘peddling hatred and division, plain and simple’ goes way beyond expressing political disagreement and amounts to yet another attempt to silence the people’s views by labelling them bigots.
Meanwhile, the rally and attendees were subject to extraordinary levels of political scrutiny and policing designed to restrict freedom in several new ways. Eleven foreign speakers – including democratically elected or prospective politicians such Flemish MP Filip Dewinter, Polish MEP Dominik Tarczyński and Republican candidate Valentina Gomez – were barred from entering the UK to address the crowds. Moreover, live facial-recognition technology was deployed on a march for the first time, scanning attendees across central London under the justification of preventing disorder and identifying extremists.
Under the radar, another dangerous new development became clear. Police warned that both the Unite the Kingdom and the Nakba marches, taking place on the same day, would be subject to a condition that ‘the responsibility [rests] on the organiser as well as the speaker to stay within the law (on hate speech)’. Since when did we legislate for guilt by association on public demonstrations? Further, phrases such as ‘death to the IDF’ or ‘globalise the intifada’ could reportedly trigger charges arising from the Nakba march. The police even warned that photographs shared online from the demonstrations could potentially constitute hate speech, depending on the hashtags used or the placards visible in the background. On that basis, should we ban photographs in textbooks about pre-war Germany because vile messages might be on show?
The fact that so many Britons are now looking to Donald Trump’s America as a defender of free speech is itself a sign of how demoralised some people are about the possibilities of changing our own political culture. The Trump administration’s forthcoming freedom.gov anti-censorship portal is reportedly being flooded with British users, who make up the clear majority of visitors to the holding page. That should embarrass Britain’s political class.
The answer cannot simply be outsourcing the defence of our liberty to America. If freedom is to flourish here, Britons themselves will have to rebuild the culture and institutions capable of defending it.
At Living Freedom, we operate under the banner that ‘every generation must renew freedom for its own times’. There is no better place to start than by engaging in the brilliant programme of discussion and debate at this year’s Living Freedom Summer School. Get your application in NOW!
About Living Freedom Summer School
Join us from 9-11 July in central London for lectures, panel debates and workshops led by a brilliant line-up of thinkers, authors, critics and campaigners – including Frank Furedi, Ella Whelan, Nigel Biggar, Rosie Kay and Timandra Harkness. Topics range widely across contemporary issues related to freedom and free speech – from ‘What is a citizen?’ to ‘How to cultivate intellectual virtue?’, from narrative control to women’s freedom, from banning social media for under-16s to how far we should tolerate the intolerant.
Our heavily subsidised tickets cost just £50 (a saving of £450) and include meals and accommodation.
Apply now for Living Freedom Summer School 2026 using the button below. For more context to this year’s event, see Living Freedom Substack.