Logo for 7x7 Ideas FourmWho says that Wel­ling­ton is devoid of intel­lec­tu­al debate? Cer­tainly not the people behind the 7x7 Ideas For­ums, who organ­ise reg­u­lar present­a­tions where 7 people each get 7 minutes to pro­mote, demon­strate and dis­cuss their ideas. There’s no indic­a­tion on their web­site of who will be speak­ing dur­ing this series, but the pre­vi­ous series (some videos of which are avail­able at R2) included a per­form­ance poet, a car­ni­val entre­pen­eur, an adven­turer, a con­sti­tu­tion­al law­yer and a grav­it­a­tion the­or­ist. So, just the usu­al crowd, then.

The new series kicks off tomor­row (Thursday 6th April) at 6pm. They used to be held in (e)-vision, but that ven­ue has now been divided into an archi­tect’s stu­dio, art gal­lery and fash­ion boutique, so this series will be at the Ilott Theatre in the Town Hall. Tomor­row’s event has the theme “Win­ning the world from Wel­ling­ton”, which could (and no doubt will) be inter­preted in many dif­fer­ent ways. I’d be there myself, if it was­n’t for the fact that I’m speak­ing at anoth­er sem­in­ar that even­ing. With any luck, after the 7x7 for­um fin­ishes at 7:30, the adja­cent cafés will be abuzz with ideas, debate and meta­phor­ic­al dol­phin-dis­sec­tion.