University of Birmingham hub for UK's largest humanities festival
The University’s 2024 Festival Hub engaged with ‘Birmingham Landmarks: Texts, Places, People’ that represent the diverse communities of the city.
In collaboration with arts, cultural, heritage and community partners – including the Library of Birmingham, the NotNow Collective, the Midland Arts Centre (MAC), Braidwood Trust School for the Deaf, the Zawiya Trust, Birmingham Museums Trust, Centrala and the National Literacy Trust – the programme combined workshops, film screenings, theatre, food, performance, immersive experiences and storytelling.
The programme featured ‘From a Beautiful Place’, a creative writing workshop inspired by the poetry of Benjamin Zephaniah; ‘Breaking Borders’, a creative practice and celebration event marking the the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the eastern expansion of the European Union in 2004; ‘Islam, Art and Testimony’, a workshop and performance exploring the Birmingham Qur’an and the Qibla Indicator; ‘Signing Shakespeare’, a signed performance of The Tempest and a showcase for a project designed to make Shakespeare’s work accessible to Deaf young people across the country; ‘Finding Your Feet’, a performance-audio experience focused on the notion of "settling in"; and a Shakespeare Family Day that included a series of children’s arts, crafts, storytelling and performance events.
Arts curator, writer and consultant Ruth Millington has written on the Festival for the Sunday Mercury and the Birmingham Post & Mail and says:
“Acting as a dynamic Festival Hub, the University of Birmingham actively engaged participants with the humanities and academics’ ongoing research. Focusing on the city’s texts, places and people, it proved that landmarks are sites of personal and collective stories, and Birmingham has a great many.”
The University of Birmingham 2024 Festival Hub was supported by funding from Being Human Festival and was delivered in part through the University’s Culture Forward network of over 50 arts, cultural, community, heritage and creative organisations based or working in Birmingham and the West Midlands.
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Being Human Festival which aims to share and celebrate the importance of the humanities. The Festival is led by the School of Advanced Study at the University of London, the UK’s national centre for the pursuit, support and promotion of research in the humanities. The festival works in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy to support humanities public engagement across the UK.