Cambridge festival of ideas

Green = psychology, blue = philosophy, none = interesting for one/both but not tightly tied to the subject.

Sanity?: Attitudes to mental health 

Wed 20 October

Discuss attitudes to mental health with The Open University. The Open University has recently co-produced two television programmes on mental health with the BBC, which aim to raise awareness of good mental health and to de-stigmatise mental illness. Doors open at 5pm.  BOOKING REQUIRED

Assembling Bodies

Wed 20 October – Sat 30 October

Challenge your ideas about human bodies at this interactive exhibition. Explore how the human body has been considered at various times and in different places. Prehistoric handaxes, South African bodymaps, kinetic art, brain scans and more.

Squeaky Gate presents ‘Inside an Unquiet Mind’

Thu 21 October – Sun 31 October

Journey through an Unquiet Mind: a stimulating, interactive trip into the dark, rich and creative world of mental illness through film, music, art and performance. Not for the faint hearted! Live performances at 7.15pm, 8.15pm and 9.15pm.

Spinningyarns

Thu 21 October

Textile artist Jenny Langley’s ‘dream commission’ – interpreting Charles Darwin’s travels and discoveries into a tactile story rug that could bring his science to life. Find out about Jenny’s work and how she set about tackling this unusual challenge. The Museum will be open from 6.30pm for refreshments and to view the
exhibitions that inspired Jenny’s work. Ages: 16+

Art of dreams 

Sat 23 October

Join Dr Lizzie Burns and Dr Matt McFall on a voyage into the realm of dreams. Visit the cabinet of sleep and make a work of art to take home.

Fun with language

Sat 23 October

Interactive language games: test your skills against our resident Scrabble champion, challenge us into a Sudoku competition and bust some myths about language. 7-8pm

What it means to be human 

Sat 23 October

A series of 30 minute workshops on state-of-the-art linguistic research, including topics such as unconscious language learning and grammar in the brain.  11am-1pm

The development of mathematical skills 

Tue 26 October

Come and try our short computer games challenging all kinds of cognitive skills such as memory, attention, visual-spatial ability, mathematics and more. 11am-3pm

Creativity: origins, process and psychology

Sat 23 October

062Galapagos! The Big Draw at the Museum of Zoology

Sat 23 October Go on an expedition to the Museum of Zoology and discover what islands can tell us about evolution. Explore the galleries and build a new island with all its incredible animals that swim in the sea, creep and crawl in the undergrowth, or bask in the sun.

Tell me what you eat…

Sat 23 October …and I will tell you who you are. This talk will examine how our personal and national identity is reflected in our eating habits. Come along and test the theory! Presented by Anglia Ruskin University.  12-1pm

 Communication across cultures

Sat 23 October.  Through a series of activities and games we will explore how stereotypes, ethnocentrism and other concepts influence the way we think and how we interact with others Presented by Anglia Ruskin University. 1-3pm

Raising bilingual children: strengths and challenges

Sat 23 October.  Four talks by Cambridge researchers on the challenges and advantages faced by families and teachers of bilingual children.  2-5pm

Linguistic profiling

Sun 24 October.  This exciting talk given by Dr Bert Vaux will examine the ways in which humans have been able to identify with stunning accuracy a speaker’s age, race, class, region, gender, and sexual orientation from just a short audio sample of their speech.  1-2.15pm

Why the earth doesn’t fall

Mon 25 October.  With the impressive back drop of the cast gallery, take a seat next to The Discus Thrower and dip into the world of Classics with Mr Nick Denyer, Senior Lecturer in Ancient Philosophy. Part of the Lunchtime lecture series.

Attitudes to body image

Mon 25 October  Ben Barry, founder of the Ben Barry Agency, a modelling agency and consultancy known for its use of diverse models, is researching models and their impact on female health at Cambridge’s Judge Business School. Ben talks about the impact of body diversity in the modelling world, on the high street, in the classroom and on the couch.

Scriptural Reasoning with the experts

Mon 25 October  Experience the electric atmosphere when Jewish, Christian and Muslim scholars study their sacred texts together. Watch Scriptural Reasoning demonstrated by a panel, and try it out for yourself.

The laboratory of bodies

Tue 26 October  What does your body say about you? Measure your senses, find out how civilised you are with our array of experiments from past and present. Visit our phrenologist to discover your future career.

How do babies think?

Tue 26 October  Have you ever wondered how babies think? Come and help us at the Infant Cognition Laboratory and find out. We’ll be talking to parents and babies from 0 to 12 months. It’ll be fun.

Reasoning and science learning

Tue 26 October  We’ve been studying how students’ reasoning abilities relate to their ability to learn about scientific ideas, especially those that involve stuff we can’t see (atoms, cells and other microscopic stuff). Join us to try out one of our new computer tasks and/or to take part in an activity looking at how stuff dissolves in water (INSTRUCT lab website: http://sites.google.com/site/instructlab/).

Good parenting: an evidence-based perspective

Thu 28 October  This session, chaired by Professor Jacqueline Scott, has four eminent speakers who will help review the evidence concerning the quality of parenting in the diverse range of families that characterise contemporary society; as well drawing out the lessons for parenting, from early childhood through into the teenage years and beyond. The four speakers are; Professor Susan Golombok, an expert on non-traditional family forms; Professor Michal Lamb, an expert on the importance of fathers for children’s adjustment; Dr John Coleman OBE, the Founder of the Trust for the Study of Adolescence; and Katherine Rake OBE, the Chief Executive of the Family and Parenting Institute.

Fiction, emotion and imagination

Fri 29 October  Dr Cain Todd will look at the philosophical problem of why we have emotional responses to fictional artworks and whether there may be a distinctive class of ‘aesthetic emotions’.

Darwin’s tree

Fri 29 October – Sat 30 October  This play will explore Darwin’s life, and his questions about himself, science, suffering and God.  Cost: £10, £5 concessions