LivingBristol.co.uk

The Bristol Festival of Ideas 2008  is a series of lectures exploring some of the big, and frankly, daunting ideas out there in humanity.  The lectures are spread out over the course of a couple of months starting on the 29th of January and finishing the 28th of March.

This years selection tackles such monsters as global warming, democracy, creativity and rational choice. Each one being covered seperately in individual talks with moderately famous authors/intellectuals/clever people.

The highlight for me will be Charles Leadbetter’s talk “We-think: The Power of Mass Creativity” which promises to discuss some really recent cultural and technical changes. How websites such as youtube, wikipedia and craigslist can release innovation and creativity.

Leadbetter is going to be giving similar talks on “We think” at the Tribeca Film Festival and the Tallberg conference in Sweden. So it is nice to see Bristol on the creative map alongside these.

You can download a draft version of the book here and get involved in some community conversation around it as well… which is, after all, exactly what the book discusses.

Ticket prices are fairly steep at £17.50 a pop although the concession price of £7.50 looks better value especially when you usually can pick up a free book from the presenter. Last year most of the attendees seemed to go along for free because there company had sponsored the event and the organisation was a little chaotic. I paid full price but could easily have gotten in for free as no tickets were checked.

The full programme can be found here.