Made in Chelsea star and mental health advocate Olivia Bentley is joining the line-up for the Leeds International Festival of Ideas (LIFI26), as organisers also launch LIFI Futures, a much bigger strand aimed at younger festival-goers.
Bentley joins the panel for Are Kids Still Part of the Plan? on Saturday 10 October (2pm–3.30pm, Courtyard Theatre), a discussion about falling birth rates and the choice to become — or not become — a parent.
She’s joined by BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster Johnny I’Anson, offering what organisers describe as a male perspective on a conversation often treated as a women’s issue, alongside host Laura Hamilton and panellists Dr SJ Beard, Yousra Samir Imran and Betty Mukherjee, covering the cultural, economic and emotional pressures reshaping modern parenthood.
What counts as success
Alongside that announcement comes LIFI Futures, growing out of the Young LIFI programme that first ran in 2025 as a single invitation-only schools event, now expanded into four events built around questions the festival says genuinely matter to how young people experience life in Leeds — identity, life after school, and what counts as success.
Three of the four can be booked free through schools, colleges and universities across the city. The first confirmed event, How to be unapologetically you? (Friday 9 October, 12.30pm–2pm, Quarry Theatre), tackles identity, covering body image, gender, sexuality, neurodiversity, disability, mental health, resilience and general wellbeing in the process, hosted by BBC Newsround’s Shanequa Paris with panellists Tasha Ghouri, Dr Radha Modgil, Ash Palmisciano and Stevie Ward.
The remaining three events cover apprenticeships (Wednesday 7 October, free with Weightmans); a session unpacking the reality behind the fact that one in eight young UK people are currently not in education, employment or training, challenging the assumptions people often make about ambition and ability, with regional employers and students examining the label together (Thursday 8 October, free with Luminate Education Group); and — marking Leeds’s status as the UK’s first City of Maths — a ticketed session showing how maths shows up well beyond exams, in music, disease modelling, graphic design, construction, even space travel (Wednesday 7 October, Courtyard Theatre). Speakers for the rest of the programme are still to be announced.
Festival Director Martin Dickson said: “Young LIFI was the best thing we added last year, and it was one event. LIFI Futures is now four events. Identity, apprenticeships, the NEET label, and maths — these are the conversations shaping what young people in Leeds think is possible for them, and they deserve the same stage, the same speakers and the same seriousness as everything else on the programme. Leeds is a city of many voices. Our younger ones are the most important for the future of this city.”
The wider LIFI26 programme runs across five days at Leeds Playhouse, opening 6 October with Louis Theroux and closing 10 October with Tim Minchin, alongside guests including Chris Packham, Dame Evelyn Glennie, Elizabeth Day and Harriet Harman. Tickets are on sale now at leedsintfest.com.
