1st Helmut Schmidt Future Festival at Leuphana

2023-03-16 Young social changemakers wanted

Lüneburg. Together with the German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt Foundation, the weekly newspaper DIE ZEIT and THE NEW INSTITUTE, Leuphana University Lüneburg is organising the first Helmut Schmidt Festival on 3 and 4 May 2023. The festival on the Leuphana campus will address the question: "What makes the new good?". Young people who want to change society with their ideas and projects can apply to take part.

University President Sascha Spoun: "The festival is about thinking creatively beyond the current crises in order to orient oneself humanistically in a changed situation." Students, trainees and otherwise committed people from Austria, Switzerland and Germany are called upon to apply with their own ideas and innovations with which they have moved or want to move other people. Together with successful innovators such as bio-pioneer Anne Lamp, software developer and Plan-A founder Lubomila Jordanova, the managing director of ProjectTogether Philipp von der Wippel and architect Van Bo Le Mentzel, they will explore the question: What makes a really good idea fit for the future? And how do new ideas find their way into civil society practice?

Applications for the Helmut Schmidt Future Festival are open until 11 April 2023. Submissions should be either a 5,000-character short essay or a two-minute video. The authors of the 50 best works will be selected to attend the conference. For them, the organisers will cover travel and accommodation costs as well as meals during the conference.

At the Future Festival, key ideas will be developed that combine innovation with a sense of responsibility. The results of the work will be presented at the Helmut Schmidt Future Award ceremony on 4 May on the stage of the Thalia Theater Hamburg.

All further information can be found here: www.leuphana.de/zukunftsfestival