Iain MacRitchie & Rich Thanki: Healing the Digital Divide

2020 has seen a huge surge in online content. From festivals to healthcare, and from galleries to schools, the internet is providing services, resources and networks to connect us to each other, from the safety of our self-isolation bubbles. But with 41% of the world’s population without access or tools to get online, the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a cavernous digital divide.

Rich Thanki, Co-Founder of Jangala, the organisation that delivered WIFI to the refugees in the ‘Calais Jungle,’ joins Iain MacRitchie, CEO of MCR Pathways - who provided 300 laptops for digitally excluded young people across Scotland - to consider what can and must be done to remedy the digital divide.

Thanki and MacRitchie discuss their ideas with poet Marjorie Lotfi Gill, Co-Founder and Development Director of Open Book, an organisation that seeks to connect communities through a shared love of reading.

This is a pre-recorded event.

This event is part of Citizen, our long-term creative programme working in partnership with organisations across Edinburgh, and offering local people a platform to explore identity, connection, place and everything it means to live in our world right now. Find out more at ontheroad.edbookfest.co.uk.