How The Light Gets In Festival, London 2018

Gone are the days when festivals are just guitars, glitter and warm cider.

HowTheLightGetsIn gives a cerebral twist to the traditional format of events and live performances. Brace yourself for some big thinking as the world's biggest philosophy and music festival comes to London. Hampstead's grand Kenwood House hosts an intellectually stimulating programme of debates, talks and concerts.

With 100 events packed into two days there is plenty to chose from, including over 50 debates and talks, 30 bands and plenty of comedy acts. Our highlights include talks from world-class psychologist and writer Stephen Pinker, best-selling, Booker-nominated novelist Deborah Levy and activist Tariq Ali.

Science comes under scrutiny as mathematician and Hawking collaborator Roger Penrose opens dialogue with multiverse cosmologist and physicist Sean Carroll, conducting a mind-opening debate on creation myths and the big bang, inviting us to question our understanding of the universe.

For an even more brain-bending experience, join Nobel prize-winning physicist Gerard 't Hooft and a panel of thought-leaders in debating whether reality is just an illusion. Those with more artistic aspirations join, writer Joanna Kavenna and poet Andrew Motion will decode the 'Key to Creativity', analyzing the history of literature to ascertain whether Leonardo da Vinci was right when he said that art 'lives on constraint and dies on freedom'.

The music on offer encompasses throbbing dance beats to soulful folk songs, and there's a full comedy line up for laughs and levity between debates.

Together the diverse selection of events explore a theme of post truth. Philosopher and founder of the Institute of Art and Ideas, Hilary Lawson, describes the festival's focus on a post-truth era.

'Relativism long ago undermined the simple truths of modernism,' he explains. 'Yet we cannot be content in a world of competing tribal perspectives and alternative truths, if only the loudest and most powerful win out. So a new way forward must be found – this is the New Wisdom we are seeking out.'

Click here for the full line up.