With our project, The Big Green, we try to bring the creativity of arts and culture to the conversation about environment, climate, and sustainable development. And in this conversation, one important question is the size of the human economy. This refers, most of all, to the economies of the Global North. How much space should we occupy on land, in the ocean, and in the air around this planet? How much of the materials, energy, and life in this biosphere should we funnel through the machinery that caters to our needs and wants and dreams? To that, many people answer: We should take less. After all, we are just some part of one generation of one species of organisms among so many.’

In other words, some people call for degrowth, or the shrinking of the global human economy. But many other people insist that we need to grow even more. Because in this way, they say, we get the money to invest in a better future. And we can continue to afford such fine things as giving grants to festivals of contemporary theatre or having a publicly funded thinker wax philosophical about our place in the world during the opening ceremony.

That’s me, of course. And speaking of growth, I say that we do need to grow, and very much so, in the right way.

Let me explain by telling you about our recent project retreat here in Latvia. One of the things we talked about over this past long weekend was compost, because our current annual theme is SOIL. And one of the things we discovered while talking about compost was that we were ourselves in a compost. What does this mean, you ask? Well, very generally speaking, to make compost means to bring different components together in one place, create suitable conditions, and let them decompose – or break out of their usual shape, mingle, and change. And given suitable conditions, the result is not a stinking mess of decay. Rather, the various components are transformed into one mass of fresh living matter wherein new things can grow.

In this way, when we make garden compost, we get new soil. When we compost together as a diverse group of people, we get a new community. And in the process, each one of us is changed, each one of us grows – grows in understanding, in character, and perhaps in ability and wisdom. Such is the power of compost, or should I say culture?

And this is how you make new people – in Latin, homines novi. You cultivate them in the right medium.* Therefore, all you Homo Novus people, all of you who make this festival possible and bring it to life, use this opportunity to make compost, and embrace the right idea of growth. We can’t flourish as humans and we certainly can’t renew ourselves, without it.

And now allow me finally to propose this toast:
To making compost, and to growing, together.
Break a leg!

*For questions regarding the details of human reproduction, please speak to the festival team.