This is just a quick message to let you know that we are now accepting applications for the Being Human festival ‘Open Call’.

This second wave of applications is all about activities that can run without start-up funding from the festival, but which still fulfil the festival’s key criteria of making research in the humanities accessible, engaging and fun for people across the UK.

This year’s Being Human festival will run 14-23 November 2019. Led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy, Being Human Is the UK’s only national festival of the humanities, and is one of the largest national platforms for public engagement with humanities research.

This year our festival theme is ‘Discoveries & Secrets’. This could involve anything from art historians uncovering painted-over masterpieces, archaeologists excavating ancient burial sites, historians making discoveries in archives, literary scholars discovering lost texts. More broadly it could include uncovering secret histories, or making new discoveries about seemingly familiar people, places, communities.

Open call

The open call is all about activities that can run using existing funding (e.g. institutional funding, research grants) but which will still benefit from promotion and support as part of the national festival. Examples of activities that often come forward under this pathway include walking tours, ‘café culture’ style activities, pop-ups in museums and galleries, object handling sessions, film screenings…

Further details, and answers to some Frequently Asked Questions are available on our website.

The deadline for applications for funding is 5pm Monday 3 June.

Many of you have been involved in the Being Human festival before and have helped the festival to grow. I hope that you’ll consider taking part again in 2019.

Please do help to spread the word. The hashtag on Twitter is #BeingHuman19

Dr Michael Eades, Manager and Curator – Being Human festival of the humanities