Full Circle upcoming events

[Ideas] Act On Democracy (15/09/2026)

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 12:00:00 GMT

Act on DEMOCRACY

Topic

Organised and led by:

tech & democracy analyst Maria Koomen

Ideas / Action | Sat 15th Sep | 2-4:30 pm

*Act On sessions offer quarterly action-oriented get-togethers on a specific issue, between experts and an audience willing to DO something about it.*

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ABOUT THE HOSTS

Maria Koomen is a Democracy, governance & tech analyst and advocacy specialist. She is the former governance director at the Centre for Future Generations, working on the challenges at the intersection of emerging technologies, democracy, and governance. Her work focused on ensuring that governance systems evolve to keep pace with technological and societal change. Maria led the Open Governance Network for Europe, a joint initiative of Open Government Partnership and Democratic Society to drive connection, dialogue, and learning around public participation, transparency, and accountability with an eye to improving democracy and governance in and across the European Union. Prior to that Maria was senior programme manager on the Democracy Conflict & Governance program at the Carnegie Europe.

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ADDITIONAL INFO


FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium <30	Available on request

[Ideas] The Good Wave: Testing climate messaging for the audiences that matter (19/09/2026)

Sat, 19 Sep 2026 15:00:00 GMT

TESTING CLIMATE MESSAGING

FOR THE AUDIENCES THAT MATTER

by Natalie Schroyens

*Hosted event

Ideas / Thurs 10th Sept / 9 am - 5.30 pm

Does your message resonate with the people you're trying to reach - or only with those who already agree with you?

Effective climate communication depends on understanding the audiences that matter for your goals - including which messages resonate, which fall flat, and which backfire.

Message testing is a research method that helps you bridge that gap: identifying which narratives, frames, and words land well with specific audiences, and which ones may do more harm than good.

In this session, Natalie Schroyens, analyst at the Climate Opinion Research Exchange (CORE), walks you through the essentials of message testing in practice - and shows how it can inform your communication strategies.

We'll explore real examples from recent studies on climate communications, and you'll have the chance to practice together in applying the method to your own work: defining your audience, clarifying the attitudes you want to shift, and identifying the narratives worth testing.

What you'll take away:

A clear understanding of how message testing works and why it matters
Examples from recent research on what resonates (and what doesn't) across different audiences
A first framework to apply message testing to your own campaigns, projects, or communications

This session is for anyone involved in climate or sustainability communication: NGO staff, campaigners, institutional communicators, educators, policy advocates, and anyone who wants their message to land beyond the bubble.

PRACTICAL INFO

Free, but registration is required

Free networking lunch included

Format: Interactive workshop — max. 30 participants

Language: English

ABOUT WAVEMAKER

The Good Wave is a network of effective climate action. It organises networking activities, free Learning Labs, an exciting toolbox and thematic sessions named Wave Maker Sessions. The latter focus on a specific topic related to climate action and communication.

What's Behind The News (23/09/2026)

Wed, 23 Sep 2026 16:30:00 GMT

WHAT's BEHIND THE News

A news commentary with

James Kanter & guests

Ideas Festival / Wed 23rd Sept / 06.30-8.30 pm

Live & On the Record: A Podcast with James Kanter

Europe’s news is loud and moving fast. What’s Behind the News keeps up and cuts through the noise. Come join veteran Brussels journalist James Kanter and a stellar cast of journalists and reporters who break through the clutter and help make sense of it.

From EU power plays, to the stories that shaped the week and the ones that slipped past the front page, come hear what's really going on behind the headlines.

This is journalism doing what it's supposed to do: telling it as it is. Unfiltered and live in front of you. Join us and dig into the stories defining Europe right now.

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ABOUT THE HOST & GUESTS

James Kanter is an American and British award-winning journalist and Brussels-based commentator on EU affairs. Previously at Herald Tribune and The New York Times. He's co-founder and editor of the Podcast EU Scream.

Guests to be announced soon

[Salon] Cecilia Rikap: Corporate power in the age of AI and the Cloud (24/09/2026)

Thu, 24 Sep 2026 16:30:00 GMT

CORPORATE POWER in the age of ai
And the cloud

A salon with CECILIA RIKAP

Ideas / Salon | Thurs 24th Sept | 6.30-8.30 pm

*Doors open at 6.30pm. The speaker will start at 7pm.

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Who really rules the world we live in? Not governments. Not voters. According to award-winning economist Cecilia Rikap, it's a small cluster of cloud hegemons (Amazon, Microsoft, Google) whose intellectual monopolies over knowledge, data and narratives now shape global capitalism itself.

Rikap reveals how even giants like Disney, McDonald's, Nike and Walmart depend on these tech rulers to extract value through AI and discipline their own workforces. States, too, are watching core functions slip from their hands. Innovation, in this telling, is not a free and neutral game - it's a hierarchy, and someone is always at the top of it.

To get there, Rikap went straight to the source: 112 interviews with people inside the world's largest firms, combined with hard data on venture capital, acquisitions, open source, AI conferences and patents - piecing together a vivid map of who holds power today and what's at stake.

However, this is not a story without an exit. Rikap's counterimage insists technology can still be developed by the people, for the people and the planet, through democratic planning rather than predatory concentration.

Come hear how we got here and how we might take the cloud back.

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ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Cecilia Rikap is an award winning economist and currently Head of Research and Associate Professor in Economics at the UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP). She is also a researcher at the CONICET, Argentina's national research council and a researcher at University of Technology of Compiègne. Her research is rooted in the international political economy of science and technology and the economics of innovation. She currently studies the rising concentration of intangible assets leading to the emergence of intellectual monopolies, among others from digital and pharma industries, the distribution of intellectual rents, resulting geopolitical tensions and the effects of knowledge assetisation on the knowledge commons and development.

GOOD READS

The Rulers, Corporate Power in the Age of AI and the Cloud (2026); Capitalism, Power and Innovation: Intellectual Monopoly Capitalism Uncovered (2021); The Digital Innovation Race: Conceptualising the Emerging New World Order (2021).