Celebrating Nottingham's creativity

Being-Human-440 
02 Nov 2015 15:37:41.027
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A public festival will showcase and celebrate the best of the cultural and artistic scene in Nottingham this month.

‘Being Human 2015 – Nottingham’s Creative City’ is being organised by The University of Nottingham and will run for 10 days from the 12th November 2015.

This year the festival will be led by local ambassador for the arts, David Sillitoe. It builds on the success of last year’s inaugural Being Human Festival, which brought Nottingham’s history and culture to life with many engaging public events.
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This year the focus will be on Nottingham’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 Nottingham’s bid to become a UNESCO City of Literature.

Cultural history

Festival ambassador, David Sillitoe, son of Nottingham’s famous writer Alan Sillitoe, said: “Nottingham 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 Nottingham.”

Among the events this year will be:

• Telling Tales of Nottingham – a photographic project led by David Sillitoe ending in an exhibition of works.
• A poetry ‘treasure hunt’ in Nottingham’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: “Nottingham 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 Nottingham last autumn which also attracted a large number of international visitors to the city.”

Creative partnerships

The University’s partners in Nottingham involved in the festival include Nottingham Contemporary, Galleries of Justice, Nottingham Castle, Nottingham 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 University of Nottingham 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 China and Malaysia, 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 graduate employers 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 8th in the UK 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.

Impact: The Nottingham Campaign, its biggest-ever fundraising campaign, is delivering the University’s vision to change lives, tackle global issues and shape the future. More news…


Story credits

More information is available from Sally Bowden, Faculty of Arts Research Development Manager at The University of Nottingham on +44 (0)115 951 4593 or sally.bowden@nottingham.ac.uk
CharlotteAnscombe

Charlotte Anscombe – Media Relations Manager (Arts and Social Sciences)

Email: charlotte.anscombe@nottingham.ac.uk  Phone:+44 (0)115 74 84 417 Location: University Park

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Published Date
Monday 10th November 2014

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