No one can accuse HowTheLightGetsIn Festival of lacking ambition. The annual philosophy and music event, held just across the Welsh border in the town of Hay-on-Wye, has always insisted on differentiating itself from the swathes of other literary and cultural festivals, where self-promotion is all too often the name of the game. Instead, over the course of four days and more than 300 events, HowTheLightGetsIn seeks to bring a warm accessibility to a cold and all-too-often foreboding area of study.
“It felt to me that in British culture we were a bit suspicious of philosophy,” Hilary Lawson, the festival’s founder, tells me. “But philosophy isn’t some sort of abstract, complicated, impossibly technically difficult subject. We are all philosophers. And so the topics in the festival are really trying to address the biggest questions that we are facing at the moment – but in a way which is very inclusive and involves everyone.”
