Cambridge Ideas: Henry VIII - King of Tunes

King Henry the VIII is chiefly associated with gluttony, lechery and murder. Surprisingly, it turns out he was also a deeply sensitive soul, who liked to express himself by penning his own musical compositions. Even more surprisingly, he was rather good at it. Love, longing, desire and passion; this is Henry as you've never heard him before. In this podcast you can hear a selection of this stunning early music, sung by the group Alamire, to mark the 500th anniversary of Henry's coronation. Reporter Fred Dove spoke to David Skinner, Alamire's director and Director of Music at Sidney Sussex College, University of Cambridge, about Henry's juicy musical legacy.

An introduction to the Festival Of Ideas

Notebook project

An exhibition of twenty-one specially-commissioned artists' drafting notebooks. This is your chance to peek into the working notebooks of poets, comedians, artists, writers, performers and many more working in contexts as varied as Channel 4 television, US Vogue, Manchester City Football Club and the Antarctic. If you've always dreamed of a creative career, have a look at short interviews with the artists, radio producers, curators and writers featured in the exhibition as they give us an insight into the way they work.

What's the point of economics?

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27 October 2008
Evan Davis, Dr Mike Kitson and Professor Willy Brown

A global economic crisis ensured a packed audience for an evening session asking what the point was of economics. In an engaging exposition, the BBC Today programme's Evan Davis told us that what economics provided was a tool-kit of concepts for addressing economic issues. He explained five of his favourites and proceeded to use them to analyse the nature of the current financial melt-down. The Judge Business School's Mike Kitson then berated the tendency for economists to make their trade more complex and mathematical than they need. The great insights came from past economists who coped perfectly well in plain English. Willy Brown, of the Economics Faculty, discussed the surprisingly trouble-free introduction of Britain's National Minimum Wage as a model of how economic analysis was both useful, and learned from practical experience. The final discussion between the speakers and the audience was cheerfully controversial.

The arts mean business

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24 October 2008
Doug Richard, Nigel Brown, Dr Jennifer Barnes, Tim Jones, Professor Evelyn Welch

The arts mean business debate brought together a wealth of arts and social sciences entrepreneurs to discuss how the arts can be more entrepreneurial. They included Doug Richard of Dragon’s Den who also used the occasion to launch a Futurefest competition to find young entrepreneurs. Richard talked about digital technology and the need for creative people to work alongside technicians. Other speakers were:

• Nigel Brown, chairman of NW Brown Group Ltd, founder member of the Cambridge Network, which links like-minded people from business and academia to each other and to the global high technology community, and chairman of the Great Eastern Investment Forum. He spoke about the Greater Cambridge Partnership’s Creative Industries Action Plan on ways of expanding Cambridge’s cultural and creative landscape and about how the arts can contribute to enterprise.
• Dr Jennifer Barnes, newly appointed president of Murray Edwards College (formerly New Hall) who spoke about her work in both the private and public sector.
• Tim Jones, chief executive of social enterprise charity City Life, talked about the arts and social enterprise, how creative people can set up social enterprises which meet social needs and how this might be a phenomenon which could be fostered in Cambridge to complement other types of businesses which have done well in the region.

The event was chaired by Evelyn Welch, Professor of Renaissance Studies at Queen Mary, University of London.

What good are the arts?

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23 October 2008
Professor John Carey, author of 'What good are the arts?' Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, philosopher Julian Baggini, and Adrian Monck, professor of journalism at City University.

What good are the arts? Not a lot compared to science and maths, Adrian Monck, professor of journalism at City University, told a Festival of Ideas debate on 23 October. He said that we needed more scientists and mathematicians to solve the problems of the 21st century, not people with arts degrees and with difficult decisions being made about funding arts would have to take a back seat. Philosopher Julian Baggini agreed that there were some difficult funding decisions to be made, but argued that subjects like philosophy had an intrinsic value and Professor John Carey, author of 'What good are the arts?', gave an eloquent defence of literature, citing research he had done on using literature with prisoners and how this had boosted their self esteem and made them look at themselves differently. Claire Fox, director of the Institute of Ideas, gave a passionate defence of arts for arts sake, attacking the Government's move towards vocationalism and the skills agenda. She spoke, for example, about how music conservatoires had been forced to put pop and other more "accessible" music on the agenda to get more state school pupils in. She said the reason for state school pupils not getting into conservatoires was because of cuts in music education which meant they didn't get the right grades in music to get in. She also spoken about how she had been forced to teach literacy in hairdressing words rather than Shakespeare when she was an FE lecturer. She said the skills agenda was patronising and meant no-one learnt anything of use and argued that they would be far better off studying one academic subject in depth.

Political Hypocrisy

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25 October 2008
Dr David Runciman and Guardian politics journalist Michael White

Dr David Runciman, of the University's Department of Politics, talks to Guardian politics journalist Michael White about his views on why we shouldn't demand sincerity from politicians.

Human Evolution: past, present and future

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30 October 2008
Professor Robert Foley

An international café style discussion of science and ideas in advance of the Darwin Festival for 2009, with speakers including Professor Robert Foley.

What are the limits of European integration?

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27 October 2008
Dr Julie Smith, Michael Howard MP, Stephen Wall and Vince Cable MP

Dr Julie Smith, Deputy Director of the Centre of International Studies chaired a panel of speakers on European integration, including Michael Howard, former leader of the Conservative Party, Stephen Wall, author and former UK ambassador to the EU and Vince Cable of the Liberal Democrats.

Press freedom in the Internet age

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22 October 2008
Professor John Naughton

James Curran, Professor of Communications at Goldsmiths College and director of their media research programme, argued that the role of the Democracy is being weakened by the global movement towards the American market-based, entertainment-centred model of television, encouraging American-style levels of political ignorance.

Professor Curran, co-author of "Power Without Responsibility", one of the main texts for journalism students in the UK, said that the Internet could bring about greater democracy, but not in the near future. "The Internet offers a wonderful democratic tool," he said. "But a business model has not yet developed to sustain independent net-based journalism as an adequate corrective to media concentration and weakened editorial standards."

Other speakers taking part were:

• Agnes Callamard, executive director of press freedom lobby organisation Article 19, who outlined what she sees to be the major challenges for press freedom in the world today
• Gerry Gable, former editor of Searchlight magazine, who talked about hate speech in the UK today
• Rhidian Wynn-Davies, consulting editor of The Telegraph, who talked about the impact of the Internet on press freedom.

The debate was chaired by John Naughton, Director of the Wolfson College Cambridge Press Fellowship Programme.

Conceptions of press freedom

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22 October 2008
Professor Onora O'Neill

Transcript

 Transcript of Professor O'Neill's talk