11 May 2011

The Adelaide Festival of Ideas, a biennial event, will feature a bigger and better program centred on RiAus and the Science Exchange in Adelaide’s CBD.

The Festival will run from Friday 7 October to Sunday 9 October. It gives big ideas and contemporary debates greater space for exploration in a celebration of innovation, creativity and intellectuality.

Adelaide Festival of Ideas Executive Producer Sandy Verschoor says the biennial event this year includes an informative program with current debate, lectures and panels throughout the North Terrace cultural precinct and a transformative program encouraging change and creativity based in and around the Adelaide Town Hall and RIAus in Exchange Place.

The first round of speakers announced for 2011 includes behavioural economist and best-selling author, Paul Ormerod; Vladimir Nabokov expert and literature and evolution specialist, Distinguished Professor Brian Boyd; and human rights lawyer, Professor Sarah Joseph.

The expanded program includes initiatives for more personal exploration of big ideas such as focus groups, a speakers’ corner, a mini documentary screening program, live web streaming from festival events, a speed dating-style pitch session presenting innovative new ideas to key industry figures and festival fringe events.

Adelaide Festival of Ideas Advisory Panel Chair Associate Professor Robert Phiddian said the festival’s 2011 theme is Planning for Uncertainty.

“The Planning for Uncertainty theme focuses on a twist in the two cultures debate. The real division is no longer between the arts and the sciences, but between those who can work with ‘doubt’ and those who demand the false security of 'certainty',” Prof Phiddian says.

“There is a disconnection between intellectual life, where everything is discussed in terms of probability and possibility, and public debate, where public figures only prosper if they can promise simple-minded certainty. If we cannot bridge this divide, the chances of public debate and policy being informed by good research becomes vanishingly small.”