Inspiring leaders shared their experiences, ideas and insights with hundreds of people from businesses and other organisations at the Brighton Summit today (Thursday 6 November).
BBC journalist Clive Myrie, Baroness Lola Young, the actor, academic and campaigner, and Pink Floyd bass player Guy Pratt were among the speakers and workshop leaders.
The day-long event was organised by the Brighton Chamber and sold out the Corn Exchange, with the theme “What if”.
Brighton Dome and Festival chief executive Lucy Davies said that, before every event, staff had to reconfigure the place and ask themselves “what if?”
Clive Myrie spoke about arriving in Brighton in 1982, cherishing his time at Sussex University where he studied law and learning about “acceptance” in Rounder Records.
He addressed the question: “What if there were no journalists?”
Well, without journalists and writers, there would have been fewer speakers, not least Hardeep Matharu, of the Byline Times, tackling the question: “What if journalism isn’t about truth any more?”
In certain respects, Mr Myrie, who gave the closing speech, addressed that question too, talking about the polarisation of politics and noting: “For some, highlighting inconvenient truths is evidence of bias.”
He traced the recent growth in polarisation to the many millions of people who lost their faith in our core institutions in the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008.
He spoke about the lack of fact-checkers on platforms such as X and Facebook owned by the likes of Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and the relatively ungoverned space of the internet.
And Mr Myrie cited the real-life harms flowing from misinformation in the wild west of the online world such as vaccine scepticism.
In our polarised world, he said that the consolidation of the new media was part of a quest for profit – and the price appeared to be the unravelling of the enlightenment.
Facts, discernible truths and empirical evidence, he said, seemed to be out of fashion but, he added: “We’ve got to hold our nerve and continue to push the facts.”
Other speakers included the chief executive of the British Exploring Society, Honor Wilson-Fletcher, who asked: “What if you didn’t plan to lead?”
Her previous roles included a stint as the chief executive of Aldridge Education, the trust that runs two secondary schools in Brighton and Hove – BACA, in Falmer, and PACA, in Portslade.
Baroness Young went into foster care at eight weeks old and spent her teens in a children’s home.
She later went back to the children’s home as a residential social worker then had a stint as an actor in the 1970s and 80s before becoming an academic.
As a crossbench peer, she is one of the first black women in the House of Lords and has asked her share of “what if” questions.
One attendee said that yet again the Chamber had put together a fantastic line up of inspiring speakers.
A glimpse of the future? What future with this government no body got any reason to be optimistic about anything