Welcome to the opening day of the 2009 Guardian Hay Festival.
Thursday 21st May - This morning
The Hay Festival Greenprint Forum - Earth, Wind, Fire & Water. The situation facing our planet will not be solved through a one-size-fits-all approach. This series of conversations addresses global change, cultural imagination, sustainable practice and the fusions of indigenous and traditional cultures and progressive science. Walter Erdelen, assistant director-general of Oxfam will introduce.
Coming up later
7.30pm - Jill Evans MEP, Lisa Stevens, Kay Swinburne, John Bufton, Alan Butt Philip
European Election Question Time
Peter Florence chairs a hustings for the leading candidates (Plaid Cymru, Labour, Conservative, UKIP and Lib Dem) for the four Welsh seats voted for on 4 June. Questions welcome in advance via hayfestival.com/forum/europe.
Don’t miss
David Tickner and Homero Aridjis talking Water – The Basics of Life at 5.30 in the Oxfam Studio
Quotes of the day
‘We are living in interesting times echoing all the '9s' of the previous one hundred years. Each decade has climaxed in vast upheaval and seismic change powered by big thinking, human ingenuity and the audacity of hope - from the Treaty of Versailles and the Wall Street Crash to the Second World War and the fall of the Berlin Wall. And all these revolutions resonate throughout the world today in its current crises. What we can do in Hay is respond by investing heavily in the un-devaluable currencies of ideas. The programme for May balances rocket science and cabaret, macro-economics and jazz, God and Darwin, and, at the heart of everything, imaginative writers interpreting our lives in poetry and fiction.’ Peter Florence, Director
Thought for the day
The Greenprint Forum with UNESCO, the Hay on Earth workshops and the array of individual events all discussing Climate Change and the impacts both large and small on us and the planet, will, we hope, help deliver new impetus in the race for solutions" Andy Fryers, Greenprint Officer