Over 40 news events announced in our autumn season!

Date posted: 1 September 09

Bristol Festival of Ideas announced its autumn programme today with news of over 40 events taking place in venues across Bristol city centre. Leading speakers, including Alan Davies, Shappi Khorsandi, Vic Reeves, Simon Schama, Virginia Ironside and journalist of the year Gillian Tett, come to Bristol to talk about their new work, politics, art, growing up and getting old, as well as liberties and the law, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, God and superstition, the financial crisis, and globalisation.

A key theme is the response to climate change. The Festival is collaborating with Arnolfini on the 100 Days project – a major season of events marking the Countdown to the Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December – with a programme of speakers and films looking at green issues, place, waste, consumerism, cities and the economy.

Other highlights include:
• Graciela Chichilnisky, advisor to President Obama and one of the key architects of the Kyoto agreement, on saving Kyoto
• Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall on River Cottage Everyday and the politics of food
• Anna Minton and Carolyn Steel on future cities
• Leading Conservative thinker and politician Zac Goldsmith on the new economy
• John Micklethwait, editor-in-chief of the Economist on the resurgence of religion worldwide
• Radical lawyer, Michael Mansfield, on his life in the law
• Tristram Stuart and Rose George on how waste is destroying the environment
• Ben Wilson and John Kampfner on how liberty is being constrained in Britain

The Festival is also promoting the final season of the 2009 University of Bristol Centenary Lectures.

Andrew Kelly, Director of the Festival, said today:
“This is our best and biggest autumn season yet. We have world-class speakers coming to the city for debate and discussion on some of the key issues of our time from issues of liberties and the law, food to the way we are wasting the natural resources of the earth. There’s also plenty of fun guaranteed with Alan Davies and Vic Reeves.”

Links

Click here to see the full programme.