Being Human 2024 in numbers

  • 232 : events and activities
  • 21,000 : audience members
  • 57 : towns and cities
  • 147 : venues and locations
  • 64 : universities and research organisations
  • 92 : lead organisers
  • 5 : Festival Hubs

2024 Being Human Festival Highlights

Being Human Festival returned with another packed programme of over 230 free events and activities last November. Events took place in 147 venues and locations, from clubs and bars to libraries and museums, in 57 towns and cities across the UK. 92 lead event organisers and researchers from 64 universities and research organisations, led events and activities as part of the festivities.

Marking its 10th anniversary, the festival also unveiled its brand-new look, with the distinctive new red branding rolled out for the 2024 festival.

Read on for a few highlights from the 2024 national festival of the humanities!

Creative collaborations

Creative collaborations between researchers and artists can often be at the heart of fantastic events and activities, and the 2024 festival highlighted many inspiring creative partnerships.

In Edinburgh, audiences at the Scottish Storytelling Centre were invited to join a sensory experience called ‘Gutscapes: Meditative Encounters with Microbial Messmates’, as part of an ongoing collaboration between researcher Joana Formosinho from the University of Edinburgh and Baum & Leahy, an award-winning artist duo who are currently Visiting Arts Fellows at the Centre for Biomedicine, Self and Society. The event invited attendees into a meditative encounter with the wild landscapes inside our gut – through a guided visualisation led by the artists, a group discussion and food and drink tastings, complete with a “floor-scape” of gut-inspired textiles created by Baum & Leahy. The audience reflected on what it means to be human when we share our bodies with many microbial communities.

In London, the ‘Seized Books! The Musical’ event led by the School of Advanced Study emerged from a 2023 festival event ‘How to Read a Censored Book’. Creatives Brian Mullin and Adam Zmith, who attended the 2023 workshop, have since led the development of a new musical inspired by the Haud Nominandum collection at Senate House Library, (the personal library of Gay’s the Word bookshop founder Jonathan Cutbill), and the 1984 Customs raids on this iconic Bloomsbury bookshop. Brian and Adam have been working with composers Tom Rasmussen and Finlay Henderson and a stellar cast of musicians to bring the story to life. The packed-out event offered audiences the chance to listen to a selection of the new songs and story, to hear directly from the researchers involved, and to engage with reproductions of the archival materials.

And in Derby, after meeting whilst working on the 2020 Being Human Festival Hub programme, historian Cath Feely from the University of Derby began working more closely with local creatives Alison Solomon and Anisha Parmar. Alison and Anisha were commissioned to create artworks for the co-curated event ‘What the Empire Exhibition Left Out’ at Derby Museums. Solomon’s piece ‘A Place at the Table’ and Parmar’s ‘Altar of Objects and Belonging’ prompted the audience to reflect on the 1924 Empire Exhibition at Wembley, to add to the artworks, to ask questions about what might have been left out of the exhibition 100 years ago, and to discuss the themes they raised, including those around the legacies of the British Empire.

We’re really looking forward to seeing where these collaborations, and many others found throughout the programme, go next!

Connections to our environment

Whether it’s through dance, drawing or discussion, the humanities can help us to understand the world in new ways, and many 2024 festival events invited us to reflect on our environments. In the North West, a creative expedition to Hilbre Island (a tidal island off the coast of the Wirral) took place, led by Liverpool John Moores University. ‘The Ecologies of Hilbre Island’ invited audiences to explore the relationships between humans, animals and nature on the island. Audiences set off on a walking tour to the island at low tide, featuring an audio guide comprising a history of the island and oral histories from local residents. Once they arrived on the island and following a much-needed break for hot drinks), audiences were invited to choose between two creative workshops – drawing and identifying species of migrating birds visiting the island, and charcoal rubbing and drawing of the island’s geological features. Following a shared lunch, a poetry performance took place, based on collected oral histories and poetry. With plans in place to transform the island buildings into a centre for creative activity, with artist studios and space for delivering community activities, more engaging, environmentally-focused events look set to take place on the island in the future.

In Canterbury, researchers from Canterbury Christ Church University brought the beach to Canterbury for the Forget-Me-Nots, a local group for people living with dementia. The event explored sensory memories of the seaside, complete with the sound of waves lapping on the shore, the smell of ozone diffused into the space to give the smell of fresh air, buckets of seaweed around the hall, and vinegar from fish and chips. Craft activities of postcard making and poetry writing got people talking about their memories of and connections to the seaside, of their families and of days out. There was also a sing-a-long and a (very popular) old fashioned ice cream seller on a bicycle!

In Bath, a dance workshop led by dancers and researchers from the ‘Dancing Otherwise’ research network, explored ideas of the “pluriverse” and what dance can tell us about how we might move differently through the world, and how we might relate to each other and our environment. And at the ‘Landmarks Late’ event at the Horniman Museum in South London, over 400 people came through the doors for the museum late, which included an augmented reality dance performance inspired by microorganisms that live in some of earth’s most inhospitable environments, created and performed by Clemence Debaig and the Pell Ensemble.

Our civic spaces

One of the things Being Human Festival does best is to cast light on and celebrate shared civic spaces in our towns and cities, and their rich and intertwined histories and cultures. As ever, events took academic research off campus and into the community, with activities taking place in museums, libraries, theatres, high streets, community centres, heritage sites, churches, cafes and more. Taking this year’s ‘Landmarks’ theme as their cue, many events celebrated local landmarks, from bridges and rivers, to pubs and monuments.

In West Cardiff, over 15 researchers from Cardiff University were involved in the ‘Making History in Cardiff Discovery Day!” at West Cardiff Community High School. The school atrium was buzzing with activity at 12 different stalls exploring different periods of history, inspired by the archaeological site located next to the school. Activities included ‘Science of the Lambs’, a quiz and activity trail about archaeology and sheep in Wales, and creating Mesopotamian cylinder seals out of clay. Over 270 people enjoyed the day’s activities.

In Norwich, over 190 local people engaged with the ‘Make Your Mark’ events led by the University of East Anglia, exploring medieval merchants’ marks – precursors of modern logos, which were stamped onto goods and carved into buildings. Activities included a walking tour around the city’s medieval streets, hands-on risograph printing workshops, and an exhibition opening at Dragon Hall, a Grade-1 listed medieval merchant’s trading hall, now home to the National Centre for Writing.

And in Middlesbrough, iconic local landmark the Tees Transporter Bridge was the focus for a celebration event giving voice to local communities, and prompting discussions around how the bridge worked, how it was constructed and what its future might look like since the bridge was closed in 2019 due to safety concerns. After exploring an exhibition of digital stories and imaginative timelines for the future cocreated by Tees Valley residents, attendees enjoyed entertainment from local choir The Infant Hercules and Teesside University’s Community Engineer, Mike McGrother, with the bridge providing a dramatic backdrop.

All in all it was another fantastic year of festival activity! A huge thank you to everyone who made events happen, and who attended events. We loved seeing all the amazing work bringing diverse humanities research to life in creative and enjoyable ways, right across the UK.

You can look back at the 2024 programme of events, and catch up on some more of the festival action in our short film.

The 2025 festival will take place from 6 to 15 November, and the programme will be announced in the Autumn. If you’re interested in taking part in the 2025 festival by organising a festival event, please visit the ‘Get involved’ page. Applications for the 2025 festival will open in February.

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