Being Human 2016 funded events

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Being Human 2016 Introduction

This year’s Being Human festival aims to be topical, and demonstrate the capacity of humanities research to shape and engage with contemporary public debates.

The nine-day festival will start on 17 November. Free-to-attend public events will be held in unusual venues as well as museums, galleries and cultural and community centres across the UK. Being Human’s ‘hope and fear’ theme for 2016 has stimulated a rich variety of events. And 32 of them have been awarded small grants of up to £1,500 to participate in this year’s only UK-wide humanities research showcase.

Topics explored range from ghost stories to concrete utopias, radical fiction to radicalisation, homecomings to global migrations, birth to death. Some of the best and brightest minds in the humanities will explore the hopes and fears that shape our human world today.

Highlights include a conversation with a former prisoner of ISIS, an H G Wells inspired ‘Martian autopsy’, an evening of urban shamanism in south London’s Cross Bones Graveyard for the ‘outcast dead’, a vertigoinducing installation in the towers of the Tyne Bridge, ‘Fright Friday’ at Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and stories of precarious refugee journeys told through music, dance and drama.

Being Human 2016 Hub awards

This year, six hubs have been selected outside of London, each contributing a diverse array of events towards the festival programme.

These universities will coordinate festival activities within their cities and regions in order to showcase the variety that exists within the humanities in exciting and creative ways, all around this year’s theme of hope and fear.

University of Dundee | H G Wells at 150: hope and fear A series of events celebrating the 150th birthday of author H.G. Wells, including workshops, walking tours, talks, screenings and an alien autopsy.

University of Exeter | Voices from the edge Activities and events in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset exploring different ways of articulating existence at the edge of everyday life.

University of Leeds | Travels of hope and fear A series of events exploring diverse and difficult-to-interpret kinds of travel through topics including ageing, health, climate change, human migration,new technologies, radicalisation and utopias/dystopias.

University of Liverpool | Fears of the past, hopes for the future Workshops, exhibitions and debates exploring hope and fear through topics including mermaids, human zoos, female explorers and modern ghost stories.

University of Nottingham | Hope and fear The heritage, culture and contemporary challenges faced by the city of Nottingham as a crucible of religions and peoples drawn from around the world.

Swansea University | Dreams, demons and discovery Inspiring self-expression in nonconventional spaces through photography, poetry, art and travel.

Being Human 2016 Event awards

Our roster of funded events from 30 of the UK’s best cultural and academic instutions incorporate everything from dark matter and the cosmos, to shamanistic burials and explorations on what it means to be free.

Anglia Ruskin University | The soundscapes of the York Mystery Plays A multi-channel sound installation that invites participants to immerse themselves in medieval York.

Bath Spa University | Troubled Water film screening, multimedia installation and talks Talks, a multimedia installation and a film screening highlighting the experience of communities facing the impact of climate change.

Canterbury Christ Church University | Lady Audley on trial An exhibition, workshop and interactive performance staging Lady Audley’s trial for a public jury.

Cardiff University | ‘Where are you? Hopes and fears, coma, consciousness and conscience Exploring questions about consciousness, life-prolonging interventions and the ethics of coma treatments through theatre, music, literature, discussions and art.

Durham University | Heavens above! Mankind and the cosmos from antiquity to the modern day Exploring how conceptions of the universe and its mapping and measurement mirror the deepest hopes and fears humanity holds for itself.

University of Edinburgh | Exploring transformations in faith: though word, gesture and food This event will bring together an ethnically diverse group to explore the hopes and fears around experiencing and responding to religious conversion – using innovative theatre techniques and a shared meal Goldsmiths, University of London | I am human: precarious journeys Following in the footsteps of individual refugees through an immersive, interactive multimedia experience made up of first-hand video accounts and GPS records.

University of Kent | All roads lead to poems/ all odes lead to Rome: connecting the public with their Roman past A series of workshops, gallery talks and guided tours exploring travel by land in the Roman empire.

Lancaster University | Dark matters – our imperceptible universe Exhibition and documentary questioning our relationship to the curious and imperceptible forces shaping our universe.

Leeds Beckett University | Urban dreams (and nightmares) An interactive series of events at Leeds City Museum exploring urban space, history and culture.

Liverpool John Moores University | Hope and fear in post-war Britain: people, technology and resistance A series of events exploring the British post-war experience from 1945–80.

The National Archives and London Metropolitan Archives | Surveillance and queer spaces Workshops for young people exploring the LGBT experience past and present.

Northumbria University | The power of print in 18th-century Newcastle and hoping for peace, imagining war Workshop about how hopes and fears were expressed through print artefacts and print culture in 18th-century Newcastle.

University of Nottingham | Sound and fury: listening to the Second World War Drawing on vintage sound technologies and archive collections at the British Library, this event creates a unique sound collage through performance and hidden listening stations.

University of Oxford | Hope and fear at Cross Bones Graveyard A dialogue, a ritual performance and a vigil at a former burial ground in Southwark, south London.

University of Portsmouth | Fears, hopes and (contemporary) cultural production Investigations into fear and hope in the past and future through a series of interactive and immersive talks, workshops, discussion groups and exhibitions.

Queen Mary, University of London | The Museum of the Normal and kids talk migration Exploring the normal and the abnormal through games and activities based around research into pathological emotions and psychological testing, and film screening and discussion exploring contemporary issues of child migration.

Queen’s University Belfast | Reflections and resolutions: narratives of hope and fear at the year’s end How supernatural tales have been used in literature and broadcasting to look into the past and future.

University of Reading | Hope, fear and freedom A series of events exploring the privileges of freedom, and what it means to be free.

University of St Andrews | Remembering partition – a creative response | From hunter-gatherers to farmers: environmental impact Exhibition and events inspired by short stories and oral history interviews about the 1947 India/Pakistan partition, and screening and discussion about the culture clash between hunter-gatherer groups and farmers.

University of Salford | 20 years on: London, Manchester and the IRA bombs Interactive workshops and podcasts discussing the impact and legacy of the explosions on urban infrastructures, Irish communities in Britain and the memory of the cities involved.

Science Museum | Concrete hopes and fears Discovering the changing public reputation of concrete in the past and the present – from Roman times to the architectural modernists – through films and museum objects.

Sheffield Hallam University | WALLPAPER: hope, fear, and digital fiction A series of events based around WALLPAPER, an interactive and immersive digital fiction and three-dimensional story world of family history, unfulfilled hopes and hidden fears.

University of Sussex | The art of lying: two evenings with Harvey Matusow An investigation into the cultural history of American anti-Communist witch-hunts of the 1950s and the avant-garde London arts scene of the 1960s and 70s.

University of Sussex | Moving stories: representing refugees and the refugee voice A roundtable discussion considering how the experience of migrants and refugees is used across the creative arts, media, law and social sciences to highlight immediate human rights concerns.

TORCH, University of Oxford/Ashmolean | FRIGHTFriday: the art & science of hope & fear A late night opening of the museum with live performances, digital installations, talks, workshops and film around the themes of hope and fear and the Ashmolean collections.

UCL, The Bartlett | Hope and fear in Whitechapel Storytelling workshops for the local community culminating in a performance at Wilton’s Music Hall.

V&A | Following the footsteps Gallery tours that uncover and celebrate the stories, lives and experiences of LGBTQ characters and voices in the museum.

Warwick University | Against prejudice – Ira Aldridge, theatre manager: Coventry 1828 An event commemorating Ira Aldridge, the first black actor to play Othello.

University of the West of England | We, robots Exploring how technology and fantasy collide in an event for teenage girls that brings together creative writing, science fiction and robotics.

University of Worcester | Food fest: looking at the hopes and fears of the past through the cultures of food A series of talks, exhibitions and activities exploring how fears and anxieties about food emerge in times of conflict and how food is used in times of celebration.

The festival is led by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, in partnership with the Arts & Humanities Research Council and the British Academy.

The festival is led by the School of Advanced Study at th e University of London , in partnership with the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the Britis h Academy.

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