Being Human is a national free festival geared towards public engagement with humanities research. The call for applications for 2020 is now live!

The Being Human festival is the UK’s only national festival of the humanities. This year the festival will return from Thursday 12th – Sunday 22nd November 2020, with the theme ‘New Worlds’. 

Last year, researchers from the School of Arts, Languages and Cultures ran some fun and fascinating events on creating family stories, Caribbean family histories, music and migration and the experiences of emigrant children.

New Worlds

Entering a new decade offers an opportunity to think about the types of ‘new world’ that we want to inhabit. Global issues such as the climate emergency, migration, ageing populations, the rise of political populism, the fragmentation of long-held political identities, automation and changes to the world of work are likely to dominate the news agenda. As we reach the milestone of 2020, often used in science fiction as a setting for imagined futures, we might be asking ‘what happened to the future we were promised?’; ‘what new futures can we, and should we, imagine?’. How can humanities research help us to imagine futures, learn from the past, and engage with the ‘new worlds’ already out there on our doorsteps?

Echoing previous festival themes, ‘New Worlds’ also conjures ideas about how discoveries, developments and research have changed the world around us, in both big and small ways. As ever the overarching aim of the festival is to take research in the humanities and share it in creative, fun and engaging ways with non-specialist audiences. Read more about the theme here.

Get involved

There are three main pathways to taking part in the festival:

1. ‘Open Call’: organise an activity that does not require funding.
2. ‘Small Awards’: apply to Being Human for funding of up to £2,000 to enable activities.
3. ‘Hub Awards’: apply for a larger institutional grant of £2,000- £5,000 to coordinate multiple activities as a festival Hub. (Only a small number of these awards are made every year)

Further details, and answers to some frequently asked questions are available on the Being Human festival website.

Images courtesy of Being Human festival

Related