Full Circle upcoming events

[Ideas] The Good Wave: Testing climate messaging for the audiences that matter (10/09/2026)

Thu, 10 Sep 2026 07:00:00 GMT

TESTING CLIMATE MESSAGING

FOR THE AUDIENCES THAT MATTER

by Natalie Schroyens

Ideas | Thurs 10th Sept | 9.00am - 5.30pm

*Hosted event

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.

[Ideas] Act On Democracy: Rights and Protections Online, the EU's Digital Services Act (15/09/2026)

Tue, 15 Sep 2026 16:30:00 GMT

Act on DEMOCRACY

Understanding Our Rights and Protections Online:
The EU's Digital Services Act

with Maria Koomen & Cindy Zheng

Ideas / Action | New date coming soon

*Act On sessions offer quarterly action-oriented get-togethers that go beyond discussion. Experts and general public share the willingness to take action.

The internet shapes how we access information, organise, and participate in public life — but who is actually responsible for what happens on digital platforms, and what rights do we have as users? The EU's Digital Services Act (DSA) is one of the most significant pieces of online regulation in a generation, yet what do we really know about what it means in practice?

This Act on Democracy session brings together two experts to help us understand the DSA: what it does, what it doesn't do, and what citizens, civil society and advocates can do to make it work better for democracy.

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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.

Cindy Zheng is a young professional engaged in digital policy. She previously worked in digital transformation in the area of EU projects, development cooperation, and global governance, with the aim to contribute to a more responsible and human-centred digital future.

ADDITIONAL INFO


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

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.

Not a Member yet? Join Full Circle now & come to events at the Members' rate!

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).

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ADDITIONAL INFO


FOOD & DRINK	EVENT SIZE	ACCESS
Bar & snacks	Medium (40-50)	Available on request

[Salon] Hannah Lucinda Smith: Geopolitical Shifts at Europe's Edges (06/10/2026)

Tue, 06 Oct 2026 16:30:00 GMT

GEOPOLITICAL SHIFTS AT EUROPE'S EDGES

Salon / Ideas | Tues 6 Oct | 6.30-8.30pm

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

Not a Member yet? Join Full Circle now & come to events at the Members' rate!

Long before Putin's invasion of Ukraine, conflict was simmering on Europe's borders. Why have Russian resorts sprung up on the coast of Northern Cyprus? What does Sarajevo's local politics reveal about the ambitions of Trump, Putin, and Erdoğan? these questions were already being written into the map, In overlooked territories in eastern Europe, the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus, where local disputes spiral into regional crises, global alliances are forged and broken, and power is brokered while the West looks elsewhere.

It is in these overlooked borderlands that empires end, new conflicts begin, and where Europe's future may be decided.

From the Balkans to the Caucasus, Cyprus to Nagorno-Karabakh, acclaimed correspondent and Pulitzer grantee Hannah Lucinda Smith has spent years in Eurasia's grey zones, meeting the politicians, spies, and ordinary people caught where local disputes quietly become global reckonings.

Join us for an intimate conversation with one of the most incisive voices writing on the borderlands today. Hannah brings the sharp reportage we need to understand contemporary Europe and its unfinished frontiers.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Hannah Lucinda Smith is a journalist and author. As foreign correspondent she has been reporting for major global publications including The Economist, The Times of London, BBC and Monocle, From 2013 to 2025 she has been based in Turkey, reporting across the Middle East and Europe for The Times of London, The Atlantic, WIRED, and others. Before Hinterlands she has also authored Erdogan Rising, an account of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's rise to power, and Zarifa, the memoir of Afghan human rights activist Zarifa Ghafari.

GOOD READS

Hinterlands: Journey's through Europe's edges (2026); Zarifa, A woman's battle in a man's world (2022); Erdogan Rising: The Battle for the Soul of Turkey (2019).

[Ideas] Ideas Festival 2026 WEEKEND or DAY Pass (20/11/2026)

Fri, 20 Nov 2026 17:00:00 GMT

FESTIVAL OF IDEAS 2026

"CONNECTION"

Fri 20th - Sat 21st - Sun 22nd Nov

You already know us, you know what we do, and that by coming YOU make this a great event!

Get your EARLYBIRD pass for the entire weekend today!

Full Circle upcoming events

[Ideas] The Good Wave: Testing climate messaging for the audiences that matter (10/09/2026)

TESTING CLIMATE MESSAGING

FOR THE AUDIENCES THAT MATTER

[Ideas] Act On Democracy: Rights and Protections Online, the EU's Digital Services Act (15/09/2026)

Act on DEMOCRACY

ABOUT THE HOSTS

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

WHAT's BEHIND THE News

ABOUT THE HOST & GUESTS

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

CORPORATE POWER in the age of ai And the cloud

A salon with CECILIA RIKAP

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

GOOD READS

[Salon] Hannah Lucinda Smith: Geopolitical Shifts at Europe's Edges (06/10/2026)

A SALON WITH Hannah Lucinda Smith

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

[Ideas] Ideas Festival 2026 WEEKEND or DAY Pass (20/11/2026)

FESTIVAL OF IDEAS 2026

"CONNECTION"

Fri 20th - Sat 21st - Sun 22nd Nov

CORPORATE POWER in the age of ai
And the cloud