Bookings open for Cambridge Festival of Ideas

Bookings open today for this year's Cambridge Festival of Ideas – a 12-day celebration of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences with speakers ranging from Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy, writer Martin Jacques, poet Benjamin Zephaniah and Charlie and Lola writer Lauren Child.

Academics taking part include Lord Robert May, US historian Professor David Reynolds, Professor Simon Baron-Cohen and Professor Nicky Clayton, a neuroscientist investigating crow behaviour who is also working with the Rambert Ballet.

Most of the over 170 events at the Festival, which runs from 24 October to 4 November, are free, but pre-booking is recommended for many of the most popular ones.

The Festival, now in its fourth year, aims to open the doors of the University of Cambridge and the University of East Anglia to the public and to showcase the wealth of subjects covered by the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.

It includes debates, film screenings, interactive workshops and debates on topics as diverse as the US elections, social media and privacy, the future of the Arab Spring and the demographic time bomb of Britain's growing pensioner population, chaired by the Financial Times' economics editor Chris Giles.

BBC Radio Four Controller Gwyneth Williams will talk about the future of the network and its new  move into oral history, Dr David Bainbridge will discuss the science of middle age and ask where the upside of ageing is and Baroness Halef Afshah will deliver the 2012 Annual Race Equality Lecture.

Saturday 27^th October is Family Day and it will be teeming with events for people of all ages from an exploration of magic in medieval Egypt, to a hands-on graffiti art session, an interactive historical workshop on the Tudors and a circus workshop.

Music is another big feature of the Festival, whose theme is Dreams and Nightmares, and this year sees the final of the Cambridge Young Composer of theYear competition,  Cambridge Voices,  a concert of contemporary a cappella singing, a performance of the theremin, an instrument controlled without touch and Lost: opera in the Fitz, a performance with takes its audience through the galleries of the Fitzwilliam Museum as the story unfolds.

The Festival programme is now available around Cambridge or online and gives details of which sessions have to be pre-booked.

Malavika Anderson, the Festival coordinator, said: “We are really excited about the range of events on offer this year. Every year attendance at the Festival has risen and last year over 12,000 people participated. We hope to top that this year with a host of pre-Festival events, touring art sessions exploring the Festival theme of dreams and nightmares and events which highlight the importance of the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences to how we think about the world."

The Festival is sponsored by Cambridge University Press, Arts Council England, Barclays Corporate, Anglia Ruskin University, Cambridge City Council, the ESRC Festival of Social Science, Heffers, the Darwin Anniversary Festival and Irwin and Joan Jacobs.