Pub crawl and ‘zombie walk’ win funding to promote humanities

The Being Human festival, led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, is designed to highlight how the humanities can enrich our everyday lives, help us to understand ourselves and others, and address some of the major challenges that we face today.

The inaugural festival was held last year; the second will take place on 12-22 November.

In February, a Being Human funding competition was launched in partnership with the AHRC and British Academy and with the support of the Wellcome Trust. To secure small grants of up to £5,000 to put on free events at the festival, institutions were required to demonstrate how they would engage the public with humanities research, while also highlighting its role in the country’s cultural, intellectual, political and social life.

From about 100 innovative applications for events, 31 have now been chosen.

They include an attempt to rebuild the architecture of Hull using a video game, bus stop poetry readings in Bristol, a “zombie walk” around Mary Shelley’s Dundee, and a “Shanty Mob” pub crawl around Liverpool.

A reception for the award winners and to mark the launch of the 2015 festival will be held on 10 June at Senate House, University of London.