The Red House, Sofia

The Red House
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The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate is a multifunctional cultural and socio-political centre in Sofia. It is a space where artistic experiment, intellectual curiosity and civic engagement meet, a place that values open-mindedness, an avoidance of prejudice and tolerance in the face of otherness.
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Festival of Ideas on Europe
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The Red House co-hosts the first-ever Sofia Festival of Ideas, looking at Europe and our conceptualisations of it in the run-up to the European Parliament elections in May. What has changed in the way we look at Europe and can we come up with new ideas to help restore confidence amidst ongoing turbulence?
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Can European values be bought with EU funds?
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As the European Commission proposes cutting funding for countries deemed not to have respected the rule of law, The Red House looks at the relationship between EU funds, the European integration process and the promotion of European values. Should EU funding be allocated on a carrot & stick basis or would this be counterproductive?
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Should we be afraid of populism? A conversation with Peter Volgin
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The Red House hosts the well-known Bulgarian moderator and writer, Peter Volgin, in a discussion about his personal political trajectory. What has led to Peter's increasing critique of the liberal status quo & do we have more cause to welcome populism than we perhaps commonly perceive?
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People’s populism versus democracy of the elites?
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Frank Furedi and Ivan Krastev speak in a Red House debate which asks whether populism can be considered to be a sign of radical democratic renewal, an indication of under pressure elites' mistrust in their populaces or as a description of a wide-range of approaches to politics which adopt simplistic false dualities.
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Dissidents today – from anti-communism to anti-liberalism?
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Nikolay Mihaylov talks to The Red House about the boundaries of public discussion, looking at whether liberalism itself innately restricts our ability to discuss our concerns and the conditions we need to guarantee an environment within which democratic alternatives can be widely discussed.
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The end of a post-revolutionary utopia. A Central European view
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Pavel Barša speaks at The Red House on the post-communist transition in Central Europe and why the end of totalitarian regimes in the region has coincided with a rise in support for illiberal and populist politics on both sides of the former Iron Curtain.
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Revolutions and the avant-garde: visual footnotes of the great and the damned October Revolution
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How do revolutions change art and how does the imagery of a revolution shape its legacy? Iara Boubnova speaks to The Red House about the aesthetic of revolution and its impact upon our perceptions of politics and the past.
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Revolutions and their children – revolutionary legacies: 1917 and 1989
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A hundred years on from 1917 and just 28 after 1989, what are the legacies of these epochal revolutions today? The Red House hosts a debate which looks at how the start and the end of Eastern Europe's short 21st century frame its present day.
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A crisis of liberalism? A conversation with Ognyan Minchev
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Why are European voters turning away from the traditional political representatives of mainstream liberalism? And, what has led some of the former Eastern bloc's foremost proponents of liberal democracy to start taking a more critical stance on the EU and European elites?
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Does anti-European rhetoric offer alternatives to European democracy?
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Post-Brexit Europe continues to find itself threatened by a return to nationalist sentiment. This debate looks at anti-European rhetoric and asks both how it can be countered and whether it in fact offers any alternatives to European democracy.
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The price of media dependency: the media, banks and offshore financing
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What happens when the media become tools in the pursuit of political and financial goals? A look at the impact which falling journalistic standards and non-transparent media ownership have had on press freedom, the availability of information and democratic process in Bulgaria.
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