Top Tips for your Being Human Festival Application
The CPE’s new Public Engagement Manager, Rose, shares some insights on Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities. Rose joins Queen Mary from the School of Advanced Study, University of London, where she worked on Being Human for several years.
Credit: Being Human Festival © School of Advanced Study, University of London
Calling all humanities researchers! Read on for some top tips if you’re thinking of getting involved in Being Human Festival 2025, taking place across the UK from 6 to 15 November.
Researchers from Queen Mary have been involved in the festival every year since it was founded in 2014, with some fantastic past activities - from The Great Yiddish Parade in 2017, to beach tours in Norfolk in 2019. Here are a few top tips if you’re thinking about being involved in this year’s festival!
Be ambitious and creative
The festival is looking to support really creative and ambitious public engagement work – so the sky’s the limit here! Whether that’s a large-scale activity like a museum late or a family fun day, featuring lots of research and researchers, or a smaller programme of events focusing on in-depth engagement, like hands-on workshops for a specific group.
The festival won’t fund activities like seminars, lectures or talks, so it’s time to think outside the box. Some of the stand-out activities during my time with the festival included a comedy night exploring decolonising natural history collections, glass-blowing workshops exploring themes of myth and memory, food tasting inspired by 18th century food riots, creative writing workshops on boats, a musical exploring the 1980s Customs Raids on Gay’s the Word bookshop, and pottery workshops reflecting on pandemics.
Hands-on creative workshops and walking tours are always particularly popular with festival audiences.
Connect with communities
A big priority for the festival is connecting with communities and non-specialist audiences that might not otherwise engage with the research. So, make sure you carefully consider your target audience, who you want to reach and why. The festival is also especially keen to see aspects of co-production incorporated into festival activities, so think about how your audience could be actively involved in the design and delivery of your activities. You can see some of the festival’s priority audiences listed on their website.
Centre the research
It’s important not to lose track of your research in your festival activity. The festival is looking for public engagement with research activities, and it’s essential that audiences come away having learned something new about humanities research.
All activities must involve a humanities researcher in their planning and delivery, but the festival is always keen to see interdisciplinary and cross-disciplinary collaborations, so if you’re a researcher working in a different discipline, see if you can team up with someone working in the arts and humanities.
Get off campus
One of the beautiful things about this unique festival is the range of venues and locations that events take place in. It’s a chance to get out of the classroom and think about bringing your research to life in venues like bookshops, pubs, heritage sites, community centres, parks and gardens, arts centres, museums, shopping centres, cinemas, nature reserves, libraries, cafes and more.
Think about venues that your target audience might be familiar with, or about spaces that might bring a bit of magic and atmosphere to your event.
Collaborate
To be eligible for festival funding you need to be working with a named community or cultural partner. The festival is looking to support mutually beneficial and equitable partnerships. Take a look at the Principles of Equitable Partnerships good practice guide for more tips on this.
Why take part?
The festival can be a great catalyst for getting a project up and running. It’s also a great way to make your research more visible internally and externally, to connect with other researchers and public engagement professionals across the UK, to develop event management and public engagement skills, and to be part of a vital national celebration advocating for the importance of these subjects.
If you’re thinking of applying to take part in this year’s festival, please reach out to the CPE team to let us know – you can send us an email (publicengagement@qmul.ac.uk or come along to one of the upcoming Drop In sessions). We’re keen to support your application! The deadline for funded applications is 5pm, Thursday 10 April, and the deadline for events that don’t require festival funding is 5pm, Friday 4 July. If you’re unsuccessful in applying for festival funding, the CPE has limited funds available that may support your event to take place if it is accepted via the ‘unfunded’ route.