Reaching for Wonderment

EXPLORE BIG BRUE FESTIVAL

When did the world last stop you in your tracks? Wonder can be found in music, landscape, distant places and the lives unfolding around us, but our hurried, screen-saturated lives do not always leave much room for it.

Journalist John Harris, travel writer Sophy Roberts and neuroscientist Beau Lotto have each made a career of looking beyond the familiar. John Harris listens for revelation in music and everyday life; Sophy Roberts travels into remote landscapes and the histories they contain; Beau Lotto investigates how the brain constructs reality, and what we can do to invite curiosity into our lives, to unsettle or challenge our assumptions.

Together, they ask whether wonder is something we encounter by chance or an experience we can cultivate. Has twenty-first-century life dulled our capacity for awe? And might learning to look again change not only what we see, but how we live?