“If economic thinking cannot get beyond its vast abstractions, the national income, the rate of growth, capital/output ratio, input-output analysis, labour mobility, capital accumulation; if it cannot go beyond all this and make contact with the human realities of poverty, frustration, alienation, despair, breakdown, crime, escapism, stress, congestion, ugliness, spiritual death, then let us scrap economics and start afresh.”

That’s the battle-cry with which E. E. Schumacher launches his reader into the main body of his revolutionary (yes, still revolutionary after over 40 years) book ‘Small is Beautiful’. And with the real and growing passion for local, people-led solutions that is energising the current zeitgeist it’s in this sprit that this weekend’s Schumacher Centenary Festival is celebrating the great thinker’s work.

Good Energy is teaming up with Solarsense and CAT to run an interactive workshop on local and renewable energy, and the stellar line-up of speakers is sure to inspire you too. Rob Hopkins brings stories from around the world about the Transition movement he co-founded, Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org reports from the front line in the US and environmental, lawyer Polly Higgins shares her ground-breaking work with the UN to establish ‘ecocide’ as a crime. There are also four new documentaries and a fantastic world music concert in Colston Hall on Saturday evening.

Book tickets, see the full line up and find more information on their website. Keen to bring these important ideas to the next generation full time college students under 25 gain entrance for just £10 and school students under 18 go free!