'Just over a year ago, the de-damming of the mighty Klamath River in Oregon/California was completed. Three huge dams were dismantled, and for the first time in a century the river ran free. Within days, migratory salmon were recorded moving upstream to spawn in the headwaters of the Klamath. By spring this year, the banks of what had formerly been reservoirs were blazing orange with poppy blossom. And this summer, young people from the various Klamath River Basin tribal nations made the first source-to-sea kayak descent of the river in 100 years.

The revival of the Klamath is one of the most hopeful stories I know from the past few hope-stripped years. It's also a reminder that hope is a discipline. By this I mean that real hope, radical hope, requires both the imagining of a better possible world and the work required to realise that world. When the campaign to de-dam the Klamath began twenty years ago, it was laughably implausible. But people organised, built alliances, chipped away –– and told new-old stories about what could be.

"Hope" is this year's Festival theme, and we need all the hope we can get right now. Hope is the break in the weather. Hope is a glimpse of other ways of being and seeing. Hope is a rescuer's torchlight in darkness. Hope is working together. "Hope", as the poet Emily Dickinson put it, "is the thing with feathers / that perches in the soul."'