'Between the Lines' is our 2025 festival theme!
Read on for more about our festival theme for 2025
Our festival theme in 2025 is Between the Lines —a space of hidden histories, shifting borders, and unspoken meanings. From migration routes that redraw the map to the traces of erased histories, from the margins of a poem to the frontlines of protest, we invite researchers to explore boundaries, crossings, and intersections—and the spaces in between, where meaning is made and remade.
Your research might uncover meanings that emerge between the lines of a novel, poem, or play, or explore the art of translation and interpretation. In history, it may reveal what has been omitted from dominant narratives, shedding light on the invisible figures who shaped the past. In philosophy, it may consider communication, perception, and the limits of expression.
Between the Lines also speaks to physical and metaphorical boundaries. It might take us to migration routes traced across continents, to national borders redrawn, or to the shifting shorelines of climate change. It invites us to think about the rules and markings that shape public life—from the lines on a sports field to the tracks we carve through city streets. It might explore how protestors reclaim public spaces, how maps include and exclude, or how music, dance, and performance create meaning beyond words. At its heart, this theme asks us to see what is hidden in plain sight—to listen to unheard voices and to question the spaces in between.
We invite researchers to explore the ideas, movements, and histories that emerge Between the Lines at this year’s Being Human Festival.
Being Human Festival 2025 will take place from 6 to 15 November. Find out more about how to take part.
Key dates and anniversaries in 2025
2025 key dates and anniversaries
- 20 January: 125th anniversary of the birth of John Ruskin
- 24 January : 60th anniversary of the death of Winston Churchill
- 27 January: 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp
- 6 February: 80th anniversary of the birth of Bob Marley
- 21 February: 60th anniversary of the assassination of Malcolm X
- April: 100th anniversary of the publication of The Great Gatsby
- 12 April: 80th anniversary of the death of Franklin D Roosevelt
- 14 April: 100th anniversary of the death of John Singer Sargent
- 23 April: 250th anniversary of the birth of JMW Turner
- 30 April: 80th anniversary of the death of Adolf Hitler
- 8 May: 80th anniversary of VE Day
- 19 May: 100th anniversary of the birth of Pol Pot
- 1 July: 100th anniversary of the death of Erik Satie, French composer, pianist and writer
- 7 July: 20th anniversary of the London Terrorist Attacks
- 6 August: 80th anniversary of the first atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima
- 10 August: 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Greenwich Observatory
- 25 August: 125th anniversary of the death of Friedrich Nietzsche
- 27 August: 60th anniversary of the death of Le Corbusier
- 3 September: 30th anniversary of eBay
- 2 October: 100th anniversary of John Logie Baird successfully transmitting the first television pictures with a greyscale image
- 5 October-16 October: 100th anniversary of the Locarno Treaties
- 10 October: 40th anniversary of the death of Orson Welles
- 13 October: 100th anniversary of the birth of Margaret Thatcher
- 24 October: 80th anniversary of the Charter of the United Nations coming into force
- 22 November: 20th anniversary of Angela Merkel being elected (Germany’s first female chancellor)
- 30 November: 125th anniversary of the death of Oscar Wilde
- 4 December: 50th anniversary of the birth of Hannah Arendt
- 16 December: 250th anniversary of the birth of Jane Austen
- December: 350th anniversary of the death of Johannes Vermeer
- 26 December: 50th anniversary of the release of “Jaws”
- 28 December: 130th anniversary of the first public film screening
Other cultural events
- Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture
- Glasgow 850
- Railway 200 – 200th anniversary of the birth of the modern railway (on 27 September 1825 the first service of locomotive-hauled passenger trains took place between Stockton and Darlington)
- Reopening of the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford
- V&A East opens in Stratford
- National Railway Museum reopens in York
- Greenwich Royal Observatory marking its 350th anniversary
- 100th anniversary of the Art Deco movement, founded by the Exposition des Arts Décoratifs held in Paris in 1925
