CWL NEWS ARCHVE

This is the CWL News and Funded Project News Archive. It draws an informative picture on which stories relevant to the creative industries were happening during the AHRC-funded period of Creativeworks London between 2012 and 2016.

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Being Human Festival (12th – 22nd November 2015)

What does it mean to be human, and how does the latest humanities research add to our understanding? Find out at the UK’s 2015 Being Human festival, with more than 260 public activities – a 60 percent increase on 2014 – led by some 60 universities and cultural organisations.

This 11-day festival aims to highlight the richness and vitality of humanities research and the ways it benefits society. Being Human runs from 12 – 22 November – the full programme of events taking place across the UK is available here.

Activities will be hosted in all manner of weird and wonderful locations – cemeteries, sewing cafes, museums, pubs, markets cathedrals, and in hidden spaces beneath city streets – and cover a broad range of topics from the politics of migration to gender issues, science and health to education and the arts, culture to technology.

The public’s imagination has already been kindled by media talk of ’shanty mobs’, zombie walks and Bristol bus stop poets, but there is a lot more on offer. The 2015 programme offers a range of experiences from an attempt to rebuild the architecture of Hull using a video game (University of Hull), pop-up historians breathing life into London’s Hunterian Museum (King’s College) and black British civil rights courtesy of the Black Cultural Archives and the National Archives.

‘Being Human allows people to engage with and influence big ideas, big debates and cutting-edge research in the humanities,’ said festival curator Dr Michael Eades. ‘From talks and lectures featuring the likes of author Sarah Waters, veteran BBC journalist Kate Adie, cartoonist Martin Rowson, reggae poet Linton Kwesi Johnson and Professor Marina Warner, to genuinely innovative activities incorporating comedy, film, music, theatre and performance, our 2015 programme is an incredible celebration of the humanities and their place at the heart of the UK’s national culture.’

In the Being Human 2015 programme you will find no-holds barred performance artist Bird-la-Bird exploring the intersections between LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) class, and colonial history with a ‘queer people’s knick-knack emporium’ armchair tour of the V&A Museum’s seven miles of galleries. Events in Norwich, Bristol, Manchester and Portsmouth explore the UK’s rich cultural history migration and asylum, whilst in Scotland, Terry Waite, who was captured by Hezbollah militants in Lebanon and subjected to five years in solitary confinement, will share how he retained his humanity and draw some conclusions for living in the so called ‘normal’ world.

‘The festival’s wide range of activities, taking place all over the UK, reflects the rich diversity in the humanities subjects. Research and understanding in these subjects are vital in helping us analyse and overcome the global challenges we face today – from climate change to Ebola, from ageing to tackling the challenges in the Middle East today,’ said the British Academy’s Chief Executive Alun Evans. ‘The 2015 Being Human programme features some excellent examples of the role humanities play in our lives – whether it’s asking audiences to share stories from their teenage diaries or giving people the chance to share their experiences of migration. Never have the humanities had more to contribute to society than they do today.’

Being Human, now in its second year, is led by the University of London’s School of Advanced Study (SAS) in partnership with the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the British Academy and the Wellcome Trust, and is the only UK-wide celebration of the humanities. In 2014 it involved over 60 universities and cultural organisations hosting more than 160 events. Extending beyond face-to-face interactions in the UK, the festival crossed borders on the web, reaching more than 2.2 million people across Twitter and website visitors from around the globe.

Find out more about the festival at www.beinghumanfestival.org and follow the latest news on Twitter at @BeingHumanFest.

 

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Queen Mary - University of London
Arts & Humanities Research Council
European Union
London Fusion

Creativeworks London is one of four Knowledge Exchange Hubs for the Creative Economy funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to develop strategic partnerships with creative businesses and cultural organisations, to strengthen and diversify their collaborative research activities and increase the number of arts and humanities researchers actively engaged in research-based knowledge exchange.