A first look at the Talks Programme for 2011

Talks at Solas 2010

Solas Talks are there to inform, provoke, disturb and delight you - ranging over topics we hope will interest and engage everyone.

Gerry Hassan has been described as Scotland’s leading public intellectual. A well known and respected political commentator and journalist, he is a prolific writer and regular broadcaster. Forthright, generous and massively well informed about politics (not to mention football and music) he will be reflecting on where Scotland stands after the historic SNP victory and on what kind of politics reaches the forgotten areas of Scottish life. Other political guests TBC (they've been a bit busy of late).

Top policy and campaigning figures from Christian Aid – Kathy Galloway, David McNair and Sol Oyuela will raise taxes as a political issue and shed more light than heat on climate change. Helping us get poverty over.

Pete Ward is an English theologian, who has been a pioneering youth worker and then Youth Adviser to the Archbishop of Canterbury. Well known for his books Selling Worship and Liquid Church, this year he is focusing on celebrity culture, drawing on his new book Gods Behaving Badly. 

Steve Stockman is a Greenbelt legend - a Northern Irish Presbyterian poet-preacher-DJ, blogger, mentor of young artists, writer of a spiritual autobiography of U2 – an encyclopaedic knowledge of popular music wired up to a mind, heart and soul packed with spiritual insight. Good craic guaranteed.

Other contributions include Prof. Alison Phipps (on peace-making and structural violence); Sr. Karen D'Artois (on spirituality); Jenny Baker (on gender and sexuality); Alison Urie (on the concept of Home), Graeme Maule (an artist's take on The Long Light); Fr. Willie Slavin (priest, socialist, campaigner); a session on the music of lamenting and much much more.

by Doug Gay
Doug sits on the Solas board and heads up the programming for talks.