Cambridge’s Festival of Ideas launches today and welcomes its visitors with hundreds of interesting, brainstorming, inspiring, and mostly free events over two weeks.
During the Festival of Ideas, there will be debates, workshops, talks, exhibitions and performance featuring arts, humanities and social sciences. The main aim of the event is to encourage locals to express their creativity and get involved in the development of arts, humanities and social sciences while engaging with Cambridge Students and Academics.
This year’s theme
The main theme of this year’s Festival of Ideas is to change, covering everything from social and political change to cultural transformation, with new research challenging traditional views of the past.
Programmes are organised for all and cover subjects such as climate change, Brexit, hate speech and the impact of artificial intelligence on society to how to bring divided communities together after major trauma and who will look after us in our old age.
We selected some of our favourite events, which are the following:
YOKO ONO: LOOKING FOR… ARISING AND MEND PIECE
An exhibition at the Ruskin Gallery which explores themes of violence and healing, and features an early and a recent participatory installation by Yoko Ono. Exhibition curated by Gabriella Daris.
HEAVENLY HARMONY AND DISCORD IN QUEENS’ OLD LIBRARY
An exhibition of books and manuscripts that embody the role of music as an agent of change, in the ground-breaking advances that shook religion and learning, in early modern Cambridge.
LEONARDO DA VINCI 500 YEARS ON: VISIONS OF FUTURE IMAGINARIES
An exhibition celebrating the technical imaginaries of Leonardo da Vinci on the 500th anniversary of his death. The exhibition features reproductions of da Vinci’s portfolios from the Ambrosiana Library in Milan and an interactive art installation exploring future imaginaries of sense and technique
A PLAYFUL LIFE: EXPLORING PLAY AND GAMES IN ADULTHOOD
As children, we all play. But what about as adults? Researcher and game designer Dave Neale argues that play is still part of adult life. He addresses questions like: Is play still important in adulthood? What forms does it take? And perhaps most importantly: How do I live more playfully?
HOW DO POEMS CHANGE?
Poems in print are fixed and finished. But what if they were unmoored? This interactive talk uses Emily Dickinson’s fascinating, puzzling manuscripts to think about how poems live and change.
Click here to look at the full event catalogue.
We hope you enjoyed this blog post and will visit the Festival of Ideas this year to get some inspiration and motivation.
