Festival of Failure Launch - Dr Mark Burnley

The opening plenary session of the Festival of Failure is an opportunity for all to meet, connect and discuss notions of failure across the university’s disciplines; to consider how its disadvantages can be minimised and some of its potential benefits exploited.

Recent events show how failure can affect entire nations as well as individuals be it physically, socially or mentally. From the world’s conflict zones and the migration of peoples, to the welfare of athletes and management of crime, across society and countries there is a pattern of failure to act or failure from acting. With the current Horizon scandal at the Post Office being a prime example. Failure in sport can be understood from the sub-cellular level up to and including failures of governance within organisations such as the International Olympic Committee and FIFA.

This multi-scale view of failure will be highlighted in this introductory session where four international fellows have been invited to focus discussions on the language and psychology of failure, the failure to tolerate exercise from the cellular to the whole organism level, failure in conflict and philosophical belief systems: alongside system failures in engineering and software.

Here one of the Festival leads, Dr Mark Burnley (School of Sport, Exercise and Health Sciences), discusses their thoughts on the topic.

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