Talk

Ben Okri

Festival of Ideas

Saturday 15 September 2018 5.30 - 6.30pm

The Benjamin West Lecture Theatre, Burlington Gardens, Royal Academy of Arts

£16, £10 concessions

Priority booking for Friends of the RA opens on 22 May 2018 at 10am. Booking opens to the public on 24 May at 10am.

In conversation with broadcaster and journalist Alex Clark, Booker Prize-winning novelist and poet Ben Okri discusses his latest artistic collaboration with Rosemarie Clunie and reads excerpts.

Ben Okri collaborated with artist Rosemary Clunie for ten years to create his latest book: The Magic Lamp: Dreams of Our Age – a collection of 25 paintings and 25 short stories. At this event, he discusses the project with Alex Clarke and reads excerpts, illustrated by paintings from the book.

Okri won the Booker Prize in 1991 with The Famished Road. He has published many books including The Age of Magic, Dangerous Love, In Arcadia, and Astonishing the Gods, as well as three books of short stories, two collections of essays, and three volumes of poems, the latest being Wild. He is a Fellow Commoner in Creative Arts at Trinity College, Cambridge and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He was awarded an OBE in 2001, and his works have been translated into 26 languages.

This event will be followed by a Q&A.

£16, £10 concessions

Priority booking for Friends of the RA opens on 22 May 2018 at 10am. Booking opens to the public on 24 May at 10am.

Book signing after the event

Ben Okri will be signing books in the Burlington Gardens Wohl Entrance Hall, outside Pace Gallery, from 6.30–7.15pm on the day of the event, Saturday 15 September. Free, no need to book.

DJ performance: Hannah Faith

Free

Every Friday and Saturday evening throughout our Festival of Ideas we’ve invited some of our favourite DJs to takeover the Royal Academy, performing eclectic sets of dance, house, disco and electronica in Burlington Gardens' Wohl Entrance Hall.

South London based DJ and sound curator Hannah Faith is deeply influenced by her travels throughout the globe, reflected in her electric soul, jazz-funk and afro-house infused sets. She’s performed numerous Boiler Room sets, featured on Gilles Peterson’s radio station Worldwide FM, and now regularly hosts shows on Rinse FM and NTS.