In January 2024, we will be coming together once more in Oxford to celebrate, educate, debate, share, and draw strength as a movement.  Please help us put together a dynamic and radical programme by sharing your ideas on topics covering farm practice, food and farming policy, climate justice, food sovereignty, biodiversity loss, land justice, racial justice, economic democracy, indigenous knowledge, land-based spirituality and more.

The 2024 conference will be in-person only so while we will be livestreaming sessions to a global audience and look forward to being joined by delegates from around the world, there will be no global programme. All speakers will need to join us in person. Please consider this when you are putting forward a proposal or an idea.

SESSION LENGTH
90 minutes

SESSION FORMAT
You can suggest a talk, a panel discussion, a workshop, a practical demonstration or something else entirely! There will also be space for cultural events, including music, dance, theatre, storytelling etc, so please be creative and let us know what you have in mind.

TIPS FOR A GREAT SUBMISSION
From new and innovative farm practice sessions to social movement building, we want to hear your unique ideas! Is there a topic that is particularly important to you at the moment? Are there pressing issues that the ORFC community needs to consider and discuss?  Successful proposals are collaborative, they bring a new angle to an old topic or showcase a great story.  Think about what you’d like to see if you were coming to the conference and do reach out to others who might bring complimentary ideas to your session? Also, if you have thoughts on who you’d like to see speak, let us know!

NEW SPEAKERS WELCOME
ORFC has a very strong and vocal community, which we are delighted to see return each year. Every year, we look to encourage new speakers to come forward, so we limit the number of sessions that any one speaker can take part in to TWO.

WHAT TO AVOID
We want to hear personal stories from your farms and food and farming practices, as well as big ideas. Conference sessions are not to be used to promote company services. If it looks like a proposal is simply an advert for an individual company and its product, it won’t be considered.

SPEAKER TICKETS
ORFC always asks everyone who attends the conference and can afford to pay for their ticket to do so, regardless of whether they are a speaker or a delegate. The reasons for this are twofold: firstly, we want to encourage speakers to be a part of the whole conference and not just their sessions; and secondly, we want to keep the conference affordable to all, and this is only possible when speakers who can afford to pay, do so (especially as a third of conference attendees are speakers!).

However, if cost would be a barrier for you or the speakers to attend, please let the conference team know directly on hester@orfc.org.uk. (This will not affect whether your submission gets accepted.)

TIMEFRAME
We aim to create as much space for everyone’s brilliant ideas as possible. We will be looking through the submissions from May and contacting all those whose suggestions we would like to develop for the conference by the end of August. By mid-October, we must have all speaker and programme details confirmed, so don’t hesitate to start contacting potential collaborators and speakers once you have an idea. Unfortunately, due to a high volume of submissions, we are not able to get back to everyone who submitted ideas to the conference. If you have not been contacted by the end of September, please assume that we were not able to carry your idea forward this time.