The New Statesman is delighted to be associated this year with the Inside Out Festival, an annual week-long feast of discussion, debate, art, film and performance. Inside Out 2010 takes place between 25 and 31 October at a number of venues across London, including Somerset House, the Barbican and the National Portrait Gallery, as well as rarely used spaces in nine of the capital’s institutions of higher education.
The festival director, Sally Taylor, said: “There is certainly no shortage of festivals in London, but this is an arts festival with a distinct twist. The sheer breadth of talent in the nine universities involved is staggering.
“We want as many people as possible to come and enjoy the fruits of this talent and passion in October. From the art of Cézanne to the art of war, from the abuses of contemporary history to the history of men’s underwear, this year’s Inside Out Festival will be a feast — a cultural ‘pick’n’ mix’ — for bright thinkers and art lovers, young and old.”
And the New Statesman editor, Jason Cowley, added: “As a magazine, we like to look beyond the obvious and seek out the unusual, the witty, the irreverent and the thought-provoking. In this festival we have found all of these things and more.”
The festival will open at Senate House at the University of London on 25 October with a high-profile debate: “Should the university continue to exist in its current form?”
Among the many other highlights are a debate on the literature of the New Labour years with the novelist Blake Morrison and Professor Robert Hampson; a panel discussion of the “uses and abuses of contemporary history” with Peter Hennessy (author of the recently republished Secret State), the Labour MP and former cabinet minister Tessa Jowell and the constitutional expert and regular NS contributor Vernon Bogdanor; and “The Art of War”, a debate chaired by Philippe Sands, QC, on the idea of war as entertainment.
For a full programme, see here, and keep an eye on newstatesman.com for further updates.