Machik Fest

WHAT SHOULD OUR WORLD BE LIKE IN A POST-PANDEMIC ERA?

Thank you for joining us for a week-long festival of discussion, reflection and civic dialogue on the post-pandemic world

2020 THEME | The machik civitas

For the past 13 years, we've been convening an annual gathering for those who are passionate about civic engagement, social transformation and the future of Tibet. From the beginning, our program called "Machik Weekend" has been a conversation about what it would take to build alternative futures in the imperfect world we live in.

But there is a new urgency for our global conversation now, as 2020 has thrown our world spinning into an unknown era.

With the invisible pathogen that shot around the world exposing our failing systems, we witnessed not only our grim lack of preparedness for global pandemics, but also the extreme inequalities within our systems that have grown only sharper over the past year. With the shattering race, caste and gender-based violence that shook the past months, a new global awareness emerged of the systemic injustices that still form the foundations of our societies. And all this against the backdrop of collapsing economies, political cultures in turmoil and the raging effects of climate change.

The world-historical events of 2020 have shown just how intimately we are connected to each other. But if we are to remake this world in a better vision, we need to do more than become aware of our interdependence. We need to grow a sense of responsibility for one another and a commitment to civic action and mutual aid that supports all parts of our communities.

For Machik Fest 2020, we marked the world-changing effects of this past year with the theme "Machik civitas" -- by which we mean what Dr. Tashi Rabgey calls the global civitas, "a body of people, transcending nation-states, bound together as a whole by shared norms and values of empathy, equity and collective responsibility."

The idea of global civitas is a way to see how we're connected to each other not only as a global community, but through a shared sense of responsibility for each other and our duty of care to everyone.

To explore what it means to become a global civitas in a post-pandemic era, we welcomed you to Machik Fest, a week-long festival of bilingual interactive discussion and civic dialogue. 100+ speakers will present at panels, workshops, civic dialogues, film screenings and in community building spaces. Powered by Tibetan civic engagement, we are also convened global sessions to take the program to new time zones and new geographical standpoints led by curators in India and Nepal, Kenya, Diné (Navajo) and Singapore.

Panels/workshops/roundtables included: