This year’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas to ‘go extreme’
The Festival of Ideas – for which the Cambridge Independent is media partner – will host more than 200 events, exhibitions and performances as it explores the theme of extremes.
The Cambridge University festival, now in its 11th year, runs from October 15 to 28. Speakers include Baroness Valerie Amos, musician Dame Evelyn Glennie, Rowan Williams, Professor David Runciman, best-selling author Tara Westover, film director Tim Slade, author James Bloodworth and psychologist Terri Apter.
The programme, which launched online last week at cam.ac.uk/festivalofideas, is packed with debates, talks, exhibitions, films and performances held in lecture theatres, museums and galleries around Cambridge. There are events for all ages and most are free.
There will also be a range of hands-on sessions for adults, such as a range of events in the law faculty covering everything from ethical dilemmas in medical imaging and what we can do with plastic wastes, as well as many events for children, including an interactive Arctic day, a making giants workshop and a pre-history day.
There will be cinema screenings of films such as Tim Slade’s The Destruction of Memory; exhibitions on subjects ranging from the NHS, refugees on Europe’s borders, the extreme high street and the first women computer programmers; and a range of events and performances at the Cambridge Junction.
The festival will also see the launch of Centre for the Study of Global Human Movement with events including a discussion on rethinking humanitarianism with Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury.
Ariel Retik, manager of the Cambridge Festival of Ideas, said: “The Festival of Ideas aims to challenge people’s received ideas and to question the status quo.
“The theme of this year’s festival is extremes. We’re living in an age where everything seems to be growing more extreme – whether politics, income inequality, the climate or technology – we want to explore this in its broadest sense.”
Joining the Cambridge Independent as sponsors and partners are St John’s College, Anglia Ruskin University, RAND Europe, University of Cambridge Museums and Botanic Garden, Cambridge Junction, Cambridge University Press and BBC Radio Cambridgeshire.
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