in a
New World BY DR MICHAEL EADES
Every festival offers an opportunity to glimpse an alternative world. Normal rules are suspended. Conventions are relaxed. Different ways of living and working seem possible. Festivals are places where alternative worlds come, briefly, in to being. They help us imagine how things might be different.
O
ur theme for this year’s Being Human festival is ‘New Worlds’. It could hardly be more topical. When we decided this theme for the UK’s national festival of the humanities, we had a few things in mind. We were thinking of the ‘New World’ that the UK was entering on leaving the EU. We were thinking of the turn of the decade and all of the hope and nostalgia that it brings. We were thinking of the anniversary of the Mayflower sailing to the ‘New World’ in 1620. But of course our theme has a different resonance now. The COVID-19 crisis has swept the globe, taking the old world with it. As the crisis continues, more and more people have begun to say that, come what may, the world cannot simply ‘return to
normal’ when it passes. Too many problems have been exposed. Too many possibilities have been glimpsed. Now more than ever, we need big ideas. We need the humanities: the subjects that help us to understand what it means to be human.
Being Human in 2020 Being Human festival takes place every November in venues across the UK. Run by the University of London’s School of Advanced Study, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, it is the only nationwide festival in the world that celebrates the humanities and humanities research. We exist to take new ideas in subjects from Art History to
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