We are delighted to launch the website for ‘Reimagining Human Relations in Our Time’, a festival celebrating 70 years of the Tavistock Institute taking place in October 2017.

At the heart of the festival is the Institute’s archive which over the last two years has been intricately and delicately catalogued at Wellcome Library. These two things coinciding – our anniversary and the launch of the archive – are a great cause for celebration because the insights of our forebears as they tackled past societal challenges, which we have always drawn upon as an organisation, are now available to you. How might we take inspiration from their learning as we grapple with today’s major concerns, such as an environment at tipping point, ageing and social care, displaced people and populations, crises in faith, identity and leadership, and our wellbeing at work?

The festival website is the starting place for you to join us in these questions with access to a rich programme offering opportunities to take part, reflect, dream, debate, consider, listen and observe, and perform.

With its online booking system and easy to view programme you will be able to curate your own festival experience, keep in touch with festival news, and access recordings, reflections, and photographs posted following each event via the festival’s ‘ArchLive’.

Events are still being confirmed but highlights of the programme so far include:

• A day long symposium, In the Shadow and Light of the Archive, shining a light on the archive as the heart of the festival and its relevance in the here, now and then.
• Daily Social Dreaming Matrices explored in the context of the festival’s primary task.
• The What Works Wheel exploring the relationship between evidence and evaluation.
• Events for TIHR Alumni evaluating relations and reaffirming practice.
• A Group Relations event for people aged 70 or over.  Running each festival morning this will be about a stage of life, not a number, reflecting peoples’ histories and hopes for the future. The event will be about having and losing power, having and losing freedom, and increasing restrictions on life.

As much about the spaces in-between as about the programme itself, the festival will also be an opportunity for the unexpected to emerge, with participants travelling across the different sites and venues in London, stimulating meetings between old colleagues and friends, the making of new ones, and the encountering of new disciplines and new propositions. These interactions too may bring possibilities for the exploration of the reimagination of human relations in our time.

We are really looking forward to you joining with us as we celebrate our 70 years.
To find out how, visit the festival website.

Juliet Scott, Festival Director
Dr Eliat Aram, CEO TIHR

Want to know more about the archive?

The catalogue is available for research at Wellcome Library.

The festival will take place from Tuesday 17th October to Friday 20th October 2017.

We would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank our partners in this work: Canterbury Christ Church University Business School and Wellcome Library. We are also grateful for the generous sponsorship of SAGE and Wedlake Bell, and a contribution to the festival from the legacy of Group Relations in the Netherlands.
Find out more about our partners here.