Annual politics festival in South Yorkshire, England
The Festival of Debate is an annual politics festival in England which takes place between May and June across South Yorkshire, but mostly focused in Sheffield. Founded in 2015, organisers say its aim is to "bring people together to share new ideas and lived experience that can help shape our understanding of the world." It is the largest non-partisan politics festival in the UK.
Previous guests have included former leaders of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn and Ed Miliband, writer Afua Hirsch, feminist author Gloria Steinem, civil liberties campaigner Shami Chakrabarti, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, author and broadcaster Sathnam Sanghera, environmental journalist George Monbiot, composer Brian Eno and writer Armando Iannucci.
The festival was founded in 2015 in the lead-up to that year's UK general election. It is hosted by Opus Independents, a Sheffield-based "not-for-profit independent social enterprise organisation working in culture, politics and the arts". Organisers said the initial aim of the festival was to "engage an increasingly apathetic population with politics".