Break from tradition. The new way of working needs a new type of housing event.  Housing Festival 2017 is throwing away the old conference formula. No suits, no conference suites, no prawn sandwiches. Download our programme to find out more, we've explained the session types below. Don't forget to pitch your idea for a soapbox rant to us using the button on the right - we've got just two spaces left on the programme!

• Main stage: inspirational speakers to fire you up for our interactive sessions. Topics include tomorrow's world and telling the housing story
• Soapbox: your chance to rant. Five uninterrupted minutes to tell the rest of the housing world what you think about a topic - apply by pitching us a session
• Active learning: sessions designed to address day-to-day challenges with a focus on skills. Learning outcomes will be around housing law, problem solving and teamwork
• Fishbowl: focus in on stories and a group discussion. You sit in concentric circles around our group of kick-off speakers, but as discussion progresses you can join in by taking an empty seat in the fishbowl! Planned discussions include innovation and solutions, safeguarding and protecting (including ACEs)
• World Cafe: the speakers come to you. We'll compile a group of experts around our topic to provide you with quick learning blasts based on their experiences with an opportunity for direct questions and discussion. Planned topic: welfare reform and advice

We don't want Housing Festival 2017 to just be for the same old conference brigade - we're keeping the price down to make it more accessible to everyone.  A single ticket is just £99 + VAT. The ethos of Housing Festival is about making real change happen, and that doesn't happen without allies, a big network, and a big melting pot of ideas - so, if you send five delegates or more, the price per person drops to £49 + VAT. We reckon that's pretty good.

What it is:

• A new event (as in: new type, new format, new style of venue)
  We mean it when we say this, you have not been to a CIH event like this one. 
• An event where you'll get more out of it if you take part
  You get out what you put in. If you come to Housing Festival 2017 you'll learn something. If you come to Housing Festival 2017 and get in the middle of it, you'll learn A LOT.
• Informal
  You don't have to wear the conference costume, come as you are - it genuinely helps you get in the right mind set to learn.
• For pretty much everyone apart from senior leadership
  You're still welcome chief executives, but we won't be doing the big policy landscape graphs of financially viable jargon doom. We're talking real housing practice, real ways to get better every day. We do more than enough events for the other stuff.

What it isn't:

• All ours
  We really want this one to be different - if you think we should be covering something then tell us now! We'll include what we can. Want to get involved, or speak, or volunteer? Talk to us - it's Housing's Festival, we just booked the venue.
• An unconference
  We love unconferences, but this isn't one. Part of our mission is to build some defined learning outcomes into the programme, so we can't commit to a proper unconference format. It'd be disingenuous for us to say it was even a bit unconference-y without going the whole hog. But, if you want some unconference in your life, then get in touch with Housing Camp Cymru (they've got it nailed)