Outstanding audience participation at this year’s Cambridge Festival of Ideas

This year's Cambridge Festival of Ideas was a huge success, with participation numbers up by a quarter from last year’s total of approximately 14,000 to around 18,500 this autumn.

It is hugely encouraging to see how the events stimulated and challenged the audience with some people literally bouncing in their seats to ask a question.
   - Malavika Anderson

The Festival, which ended on Sunday, culminated in another weekend bursting with events, including a lively debate on immigration that saw hundreds of attendees packed into Lady Mitchell Hall on the Sidgwick Site.

Speaking about the event, organiser and University of Cambridge PhD student, Ed Anderson said: “Putting on an event looking at immigration in detail was important to me not only because of my own research interests, but also as I felt it was a really important issue that is highly politicised and manipulated. The debate is usually high on emotion, but low on fact. The live event included presentations of different perspectives based in research and experience, and the audience responded with many questions for the panel as a result.

“The Festival of Ideas provides a great opportunity to open up discussion as much as possible, and it’s really encouraging seeing it go from strength to strength.”

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Image Credit: Sir Cam

Reproduced courtesy of the University of Cambridge

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