THIS year’s Hay Festival programme is packed, as usual, with familiar names, big names, and books as far as the eye can see, but look beyond the headline makers such as Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Tony Curtis and award-winning authors including Rose Tremain, Dannie Abse and Kate Summerscale, and you’ll discover how firmly rooted the festival is in the local community and how passionately engaged it is with local concerns.

One clear demonstration of how much more the festival embraces is the popularity of the programme’s farm visits, which are always a sell-out. On offer this year are visits to the Welsh Venison Centre; Hill Farm, high on the side of the Black Mountains; the cider apple orchards of Trevithel Court Farm; and the organic dairy herd of Maesllwch Home Farm, suppliers to Yeo Valley.

And a further browse through the exciting programme soon reveals how closely Hay Festival is allied with other local festivals, promoting and celebrating the rich and varied cultural life of the region.

A range of events take place this year in conjunction with other festivals. These include a screening of The Age of Stupid, in association with Borderlines Film Festival and maestro and musicologist Christopher Hogwood in conversation with Peter Dyke, celebrating the anniversaries of Handel and Haydn’s deaths. This is presented in association with the Three Choirs Festival, which this summer comes to Hereford.

There are appearances by jazz greats Hugh Masekela and Jimmy Cobb, presented by Brecon Jazz, now ‘under new management’ as it joins the Hay festival family.

There may even be birthday cake as the Big Chill DJs host the event’s 15th birthday party at Clyro Court.

Hay Festival will also be premiering Still Life, the latest community film production from Rural Media, created during the last year with the people of Bromyard. And, Herefordshire film-maker and photographer John Bulmer will show and discuss his work with the Guardian’s picture editor, Eamonn McCabe – an event presented in association with Hereford College of Arts and Hereford Photography Festival.

But the festival’s involvement with the community extends beyond even these events, with an ongoing commitment to outreach educational initiatives that include the annual setting aside of 20 per cent of festival tickets to be given free to students, providing access to a feast of food for thought that would otherwise be unaffordable.

Children at primary and secondary schools local to Hay will be benefiting from one-off events including Michael Morpurgo at Hay Primary School; Lemn Sissay at Fairfield School; Gillian Clarke exam boosting for year 11s and teacher master classes; Caroline Bird at Gwernyfed High School and one-day film schools. “The timing of the festival has always been difficult for students working for GCSEs and A-levels,” says festival director Peter Florence, explaining the thinking behind introducing exam-boosting.

And, for a second year, students from Gwernyfed and Hereford Cathedral School will be at the festival helping as stewards and learning something of what’s involved in the running of Hay Festival. Four of last year’s ‘interns’ were later fortunate enough to go with the festival to Segovia in Spain.

Local education outreach, local partnerships and, as always, a selection of local authors and speakers – among them Judith Wills, author of the delightful memoir, Keith Moon Stole My Lipstick; award-winning children’s author Jenny Valentine, and gardeners Noel Kingsbury and Monty Don – join an enormous selection of not-so-local writers and thinkers. They will address burning issues of the day from the state of the economy to the state of the planet. Issues that concern us all, wherever we live.

“What we can do in Hay is respond by investing heavily in the un-devaluable currencies of ideas,” says Peter Florence. “The programme balances rocket science and cabaret, macro-economics and jazz, God and Darwin, and, at the heart of everything, imaginative writers interpreting our lives in poetry and fiction.”

See the complete programme for the Guardian Hay Festival, May 21-31, at hayfestival.com.