Half price ticket offer

A special offer of limited number of HALF PRICE student tickets to this year’s Battle of Ideas festival. These allow university students full access to the weekend festival for just £27.50. Click here to purchase discounted tickets.

The Battle of Ideas is taking place at the Royal College of Art, London on October 29-30. During the course of the weekend, over 2,250 people will be participating in 75 different debates involving hundreds of incisive and thought-provoking speakers.

This year’s festival programme includes strands of debate entitled Battle for the World, Battle for Morality, Food Fight, Society Wars, Battle for Our Brains, Reassessing Politics and Sporting Contests.

It also features keynote debates on: The Battle against the Fates, Profiting responsibly? Business in the big society, Creativity and curiosity: do we make stuff up or find it out? Has tolerance gone too far? Loyalty in an age of whistle-blowing and Wikileaks, Is individualism bad for society? as well as many more discussions on current themes in the arts, science, health, parenting, education, design, international relations and religion.

Internationally renowned speakers include: David Aaronovitch, Jonathan Aitken, Decca Aitkenhead, Anne Atkins, Simon Baron-Cohen, Daniel Ben-Ami, Katharine Birbalsingh, Melvin Burgess, Christopher Caldwell, Matthew Collings, John Cooper, Giles Fraser, Frank Furedi, Maurice Glasman, Tom Holland, Mick Hume, Sue Ion, Rebecca Jenkins, Simon Jenkins, Irma Kurtz, Philippe Legrain, Dame Ann Leslie, Kenan Malik, Paul Mason, Joyce McMillan, Tim Montgomerie, Brendan O’Neill, Ruth Padel, K.A.S. Quinn, Jeffrey Rosen, Jenni Russell, William Saletan, Fiona Shaw, John Sutherland, George Szirtes, Ray Tallis, GM Tamás, Mark Vernon, Tom Watt, Zoe Williams, Alison Wolf, Martin Wolf, Cathy Young and over 300 more.

"The Battle of Ideas is a global treasure. Bringing together some of the world's leading thinkers for civil dialogue on an array of topics, the festival is a must-see for those deeply committed to the free exchange of ideas."
- Fredrick C. Harris, professor of political science, Columbia University

Visit http://www.battleofideas.org.uk to view this year’s festival programme, including satellite events, as well as carefully selected readings for each session and videos of previous years’ sessions.

Live Canon Poetry Events

Opening this week:

LIVE CANON at the Bloomsbury Theatre

A seven show series... a whistestop tour of the 'canon'.

October 19th Romantics

October 25th Metaphysicals

October 26th War Poets

January 23rd Pre Raphaelites

January 24th Shakespeare and Co.

January 25th The Bloomsbury Group

January 26th Around the World in 80 Poems

All performances at 7.30pm

Tickets £12.50 and £10 concessions

Click here for further details.

Poetry Competition

The Poetry Business invites entries of 20-24 pages of poems and if the opportunity to have Carol Ann read a body of your work is not enough we will also reward our four winners with the following prizes:

§ Book publication for the overall winner and pamphlet publication for three first-stage winners

§ A share of £2,000 donated by NAWE

§ The winning collections will be launched at poetry readings hosted by The Poetry Business; and poems selected from the collections will be published in The North magazine.

§ One-to-one support from NAWE's Compass Points

§ A year's subscription to Ambit magazine

§ A free book from any publisher represented by Inpress

Click here for further details.

Creativity as ideology

'Our yearning for creativity is how we experience the problem of alienation in a highly individualised society. Previous generations defended skills through collective solidarity and politics'

Interesting article by James Heartfield (currently a visiting research fellow at LSBU), now available via academia.edu.

Call for entries - Students artists in London

The submission process is now open for Reflections, an exhibition at the Mile End Pavilion in November 2011.

Work in any media is welcomed. Open to 2nd or 3rd year BA, MA or Doctorate students.

Visit http://4ourart.blogspot.com/ for further details.

Enterprise and Intellectual Property

I'm planning a session on this at the next symposium. In the meantime you might find this information from the university's Business Development Office useful:

There are a number of schemes and programmes around student entrepreneurship and enterprise:

1. The graduate Enterprise Associate Scheme (open to any LSBU graduate) – 1 year bursary, office space, support and mentoring (5 per year at the moment)

2. The Entrepreneur in Action Scheme – runs for 2 semesters with 2 x £250 for development and office with hot desks, tutorials and mentoring.

3. Passport to the World of Entrepreneurship – series of 8 talks through the 2 semesters from mainly external speakers. Attendance to 6 achieves a certificate.

Graduates on the Entrepreneur in Action Scheme assign the IP to the Business Development Office, which then protects and manages it for them, license it back into their companies.

The Intellectual Property Office http://www.ipo.gov.uk/ has good descriptions for the forms of IP.

Own-it http://www.own-it.org/ advises on IP for the creative sector and runs free (or heavily subsidised) workshops and talks.

The British Library Enterprise and IP section runs talks and events (mostly free) for start-ups and business

There’s also a knowledge transfer network for creative industries https://ktn.innovateuk.org/web/creativektn

There are a number of business plan / pitching competitions. The Business Development Office runs one called ‘Make it Happen’, and also offers one-to-one meetings with students wishing to start their own businesses.