Emotional power

The Radio 3 Free Thinking Festival will kick off next month with music from Kathryn Tickell's band The Darkening.

The band's debut album launches on the same day the two-day festival begins, on Friday 29 March. Kathryn​, a lecturer in music at Newcastle University and a renowned Northumbrian piper, will be speaking to host Katie Derham about the emotional influence of location in music. Later the same evening, she will be hosting the BBC's world music programme Music Planet and exploring the emotional power of music and song from different global cultures.

On Saturday 30 March, Dr Rachel Hewitt​, Lecturer in Creative Writing, will be discussing whether contemporary culture has 'gone soft' in The New Age of Sentimentality.

Dr Hewitt will be one of three fellows of the Royal Society of Literature who will discuss whether the current trends of grief memoirs, gushing obituaries and feel-good fictions have made the modern age more sentimental than the times of The Romantics, Dickens and even Walt Disney.

Creative journey

On Sunday 31 March, Dr Tara Bergin​, lecturer in poetry, will be discussing the emotional rollercoaster of being a writer in a special edition of The Verb.

She will be sharing her creative journey with presenter Ian McMillan. Dr Bergin was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Society in 2014 following her collection This is Yarrow. Her second collection The Tragic Death of Eleanor Marx was shortlisted for the TS Eliot Prize.

The reasons why sometime people can't say what they want to and the reasons why this might happen will be explored in The Unsaid on Sunday afternoon. Dr Michael Richardson​, Lecturer in Human Geography, is taking part. His research looks at masculinity and intergenerational relationships and he is a trustee of the North East Young Dads and Lads project.

Also on Sunday, Professor Louise Robinson​ will be answering the question: Should Doctors and Nurses Cry? She will be one of four experts joining host Anne McElvoy to examine whether emotion has any place in relationships with patients in a more open age.​

Professor Robinson is is Director of Newcastle University's Institute for Ageing, Professor of Primary Care and Ageing and a GP. She leads one of only three Alzheimer Society national Centres of Excellence on Dementia Care.

The Free Thinking Festival takes place at Sage Gateshead and tickets are available here.