This year the focus will be on ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’s contemporary arts, such as writing, photography and performance. The festival is designed to create excitement about the city and the county both inside and outside the region. Being Human 2015 also supports ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’s bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature.
Cultural history
Festival ambassador, David Sillitoe, son of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’s famous writer Alan Sillitoe, said: “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has always been a fascinating city, and right now there’s a huge amount happening in the creative industries. Arts and culture are going from strength to strength, with great venues for writing, performance, photography, film making and new media, where practitioners can collaborate, produce and exhibit their work. With the student population adding to the mix, and a cultural history dating back centuries, now is a great time to get creative in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.”
Among the events this year will be:
• Telling Tales of ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ – a photographic project led by David Sillitoe ending in an exhibition of works.
• A poetry ‘treasure hunt’ in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½’s Creative Quarter with poems encrypted into Art Codes and hidden around the city centre.
• Pop-up language labs in the Creative Quarter.
• Digital story telling at the Theatre Royal.
• Community theatre by eXcaVate, ‘But I know this city’.
• Rare film screenings at the Broadway Media Centre
• Writers’ Day at D.H. Lawrence Heritage Centre and evening lecture.
• Art in the City talks covering the establishment of the Castle Collections to the contemporary arts scene.
‘Creative City’ Festival coordinator and Research Manager in the University’s Centre for Advanced Studies, Sally Bowden said: “ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ was recently described in The Guardian’s Insider’s cultural guide as ‘cinematic, collaborative and creative’ and our festival will further bang the drum for the incredibly diverse and high quality artistic culture in our city, as well as that of its famous and historic past. We are delighted to have been chosen as a regional hub of the national Being Human Festival 2015 after the success of our events in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ last autumn which also attracted a large number of international visitors to the city.”
Creative partnerships
The University’s partners in ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ involved in the festival include ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Contemporary, Galleries of Justice, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Castle, ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ Writers’ Studio, Mouthy Poets, eXcaVate community theatre, Alliance Boots Archive, Creative Quarter Partnership, Theatre Royal, Primary, Malt Cross, Broadway Media Centre and the D.H. Lawrence Heritage Centre.
Being Human is organised nationally by the University of London’s School of Advanced Studies and is largely funded the Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC), and the British Academy (BA) with support from the Wellcome Trust.
Being Human 2015 – Creative City www.nottingham.ac.uk/go/being-human
More information on the national programme of events is available here: beinghuman@sas.ac.uk
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Notes to editors: The ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ has 43,000 students and is ‘the nearest Britain has to a truly global university, with a “distinct” approach to internationalisation, which rests on those full-scale campuses in and , as well as a large presence in its home city.’ (Times Good University Guide 2016). It is also one of the most popular universities in the UK among and the winner of ‘Research Project of the Year’ at the Times Higher Education Awards 2014. It is ranked in the world’s top 75 by the QS World University Rankings 2015/16, and by research power according to the Research Excellence Framework 2014. It has been voted the world’s greenest campus for three years running, according to Greenmetrics Ranking of World Universities.
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