Main stages
Festival of Ideas
A briefing for session developers
You have been allocated a main stage session at NHS ConfedExpo 2026. Your job is not simply to fill a slot, it is to help create something that feels genuinely different. This briefing explains what that means in practice, and what we need from you.
Please read it fully before completing your submission on Lineup Ninja.
Why this year is different
NHS ConfedExpo 2026 is introducing a Festival of Ideas as the heart of its main stage programme. This is a deliberate, significant shift in ambition, and it matters that you understand why.
Traditionally, the main stage sessions at NHS ConfedExpo have been led by policy updates, populated by familiar faces, and structured around PowerPoint slides that tell audiences what they already know. Delegates leave informed but not changed. They feel updated, not challenged.
The Festival of Ideas sets out to change the status quo. Its purpose is to create sessions that make people lean forward in their seats. These are sessions built around uncomfortable questions, unexpected voices, genuine disagreement, and thinking that lands beyond the NHS.
This does not mean abandoning relevance or practicality. Every session should leave delegates with something they can do back in their own organisations, but the path there runs through provocation, not just policy.
The single most important question to hold in your mind:
"If a thoughtful person with no connection to the NHS stumbled into this session, would they find it worth staying for?"
If the answer is no, the session needs more work.
What the Festival of Ideas actually means
This is not just a rebrand of existing content. The Festival of Ideas is a set of principles that should shape every decision you make as you develop your session, from who you invite to speak, to what question you ask, to how you structure the 40 minutes.
Start with a provocation, not a topic
Your session should be built around an uncomfortable truth, a genuine dilemma, or a contested assumption, not a subject area. “Women’s health” is a topic. “Why is women’s health easy to praise and hard to fund?” is a provocation.
Ask yourself: what is the thing that people in this sector quietly believe but rarely say out loud? That’s your starting point.
Every session needs a ‘so what?’ beyond the NHS
Your session should have something to say to someone who doesn’t work in health. Not because we are trying to attract a general audience, but because the best ideas are the ones that connect NHS challenges to wider societal questions.
If your session is only relevant to NHS insiders, it probably isn’t a Festival of Ideas session yet.
Unexpected voices over familiar faces
The NHS conference circuit has a well-worn cast of speakers. The Festival of Ideas requires you to bring at least one voice that NHS audiences would not normally hear on a main stage.
This might be someone from a completely different sector, a community voice, a patient with direct experience, an international perspective, or someone who will argue a position that challenges the room.
Someone must be willing to disagree
Consensus panels are the enemy of interesting sessions. Every Festival of Ideas session needs a voice that will genuinely push back, challenge the dominant view, or represent an uncomfortable counter-position.
This is not about manufactured conflict. It is about intellectual honesty. Real debates have real disagreements.
Format follows content
A panel discussion is not the default format, it is one option among many. Think about whether a structured debate, a fireside chat or ask me anything, a deliberative exercise, a live challenge format, or a performance followed by discussion would serve your session better.
Whatever format you choose, explain why it is the right container for the conversation you want to have.
The audience is not an afterthought
Minimum 5–10 minutes of delegate Q&A is a must, not a target. Think about how your audience can be part of the session, not just recipients of it. Live polls, deliberation exercises, voting - any of these can work. What will not work is treating Q&A as an add-on at the end.
End with an action, not a summary
Every session must close with a clear call to action - something specific that a delegate can do, question, or change as a result of having been in the room. This is not a list of bullet points. It is a single, honest aspiration for what shifts in someone’s thinking or behaviour.
What are we moving away from - and toward?
Use this as a practical sense-check as you develop your session.
| Moving away from ❌ | Moving toward ✅ |
|---|---|
| PowerPoint-led presentations | Conversation-led formats where ideas emerge in real time |
| Policy updates and progress reports | Questions that challenge assumptions about policy |
| The same familiar speakers | Unexpected combinations and fresh voices |
| Panels that broadly agree | Sessions that hold genuine tension and disagreement |
| Talking at delegates | Creating conditions for delegates to think and respond |
| NHS-centric framing | Connecting NHS challenges to wider societal questions |
| Sessions that inform | Sessions that challenge, unsettle, and inspire action |
| Safe, everyone-agrees endings | Clear, bold calls to action with accountability |
Getting the speaker mix right
The original Festival of Ideas vision set a target speaker mix. Use it as a guide, not a quota - but be honest with yourself if your session is drifting too far toward sector insiders.
| Voice type | Target proportion | What this means |
|---|---|---|
| NHS / health & care | ~40% | Clinicians, managers, system leaders - with diversity of role, seniority and geography |
| Cross-sector leaders | ~25% | Tech, business, academia, arts, local government, third sector |
| Patient / community / lived experience | ~20% | Not as token witnesses - as central voices with genuine power in the session |
| International / wildcard | ~15% | People who will say things that NHS audiences genuinely haven’t heard before |
Watch out for:
- Speaker lists that are 80%+ NHS sector insiders
- Patient or community voices added at the end rather than built in from the start
- A panel where everyone will broadly agree with each other
- Confirming the ‘safe’ choice because they’re easy to book
Facilitation
Each session requires a facilitator / chair - someone who can hold the conversation, push back on speakers, and create conditions for genuine debate. The facilitator role is not ceremonial. It is the most important factor in whether a session flies or flatlines.
There is no default host for Festival of Ideas sessions. You are expected to propose a facilitator who is genuinely right for your particular conversation, and explain why. A brilliant facilitator for a session on AI ethics is probably not the same person as the right facilitator for a session on workforce and immigration.
What makes a good Festival of Ideas facilitator:
- Intellectually curious, not just procedurally competent
- Willing to challenge speakers, not just manage them
- Comfortable with conflict and disagreement in the room
- Not a journalist conducting interviews - a peer creating dialogue
- Able to draw the audience in, not just manage the clock
Note:
Facilitators should not be the same person as the session lead or any of the panellists.
If you are struggling to identify the right facilitator, come to us - we would rather help you find the right person than have this become a bottleneck.
A formula that works
This is not a template you must follow, but a structure that could produce strong Festival of Ideas sessions. Use it as a guide, not a 'must'.
| Open with a hook | A piece of data, a patient story, a challenging question projected on screen, a short piece of footage, or a provocation from your facilitator. Something that signals immediately: this session will not be like the others. |
| Name the uncomfortable truth | Within the first five minutes, put the difficult question on the table. Don’t build up to it. State it plainly and let the panel respond. |
| Hold the tension | Resist the urge to resolve the disagreement. The most interesting part of any debate is when the tension is live, not when it has been neatly summarised away. |
| Bring in the room | Build in a moment - a live poll, a show of hands, a structured question - something that makes the audience part of the conversation, not observers of it. |
| Concrete and real | Every session needs at least one example of what this actually looks like in practice: a place where it has worked, a system that has failed, a community that has been affected. |
| End with an action | Close with a single, specific call to action. Not bullet points. Not learning objectives. One thing you want people to do differently when they leave this room. |
What success looks like
We will measure the Festival of Ideas against more than just attendance. The ambition is for sessions that generate follow-on impact: coverage, collaborations, policy influence, and lasting shifts in thinking.
The feedback question we most want delegates to answer ‘yes’ to is not “I learned something useful.” It is:
“This session challenged my thinking in a way I wasn’t expecting.”
If you are developing a session and that outcome feels out of reach, ask yourself what would need to change - in the framing, the speakers, the format, or the question, to get there.
Before you submit: your checklist
Run through these questions before completing your Lineup Ninja submission. If you are answering ‘no’ to more than two, your session needs more development.
✅ Does your session title pose a question or name an uncomfortable truth?
✅ Can you state the provocation at the heart of your session in two sentences?
✅ Does your session have a ‘so what’ that extends beyond the NHS?
✅ Does your speaker mix include at least one voice NHS audiences wouldn’t normally hear?
✅ Is there someone on your panel who will genuinely disagree with or challenge the others?
✅ Have you thought about format, and is a panel discussion actually the right choice?
✅ Is your proposed facilitator the right person for this specific conversation?
✅ Have you planned for meaningful audience participation beyond end-of-session Q&A?
✅ Does your session close with a single, specific call to action?
✅ Would a thoughtful non-NHS person find this session worth staying for?
Support and next steps
You are not developing your session in isolation. If you are stuck on a provocation, unsure about your speaker mix, struggling to find your challenge voice, or uncertain about format, please reach out before your submission rather than after.
The programme team is here to help you make your session the best it can be, not to police what you submit. The more ambitious you are willing to be, the more support we can offer.
| Milestone | Deadline |
|---|---|
| Initial session submission | 5pm, Friday 6 March 2026 |
| Full session details for publication (title, description and confirmed speakers) | 5pm, Friday 27 March 2026 |
| Speaker profiles submitted for publication | 10 April 2026 |
| AV needs confirmed | 15 May 2026 |
| Slides submitted | 5 June 2026 |
| All speakers fully briefed | 5 June 2026 |
| Promote your session | Ongoing from when the online agenda launches |
Questions? Contact the ConfedExpo programme team at sessions@nhsconfed.org