Festival of the Mind 2020 launches programme with live and online events
New ‘online festival hub’ will bring creative collaborations with University of Sheffield academics to the wider city this month.
Festival of the Mind has launched its 2020 programme, with live and online events set to take place from 17 to 27 September around the themes of Sustainability, Extinction, Hope, Artificial Intelligence, Climate Change and Health.
The unique collaborative festival, which takes place every other year, sees creative Sheffielders team up with academics from the University of Sheffield to share research and learning in engaging and thought-provoking ways.
This year’s diverse programme includes installations, exhibitions, podcasts, films, sculpture and performance exploring how brain connections work in a state of disease, the history and future of Castlegate, artificial intelligence and surveillance, the return of salmon to Sheffield’s waterways, sex in later life, and more.
The Spiegeltent, the venue and festival hub which is usually located in Barkers Pool, has been recreated digitally as the online “home and heart” of the 2020 festival.
Sheffield artist Jo Peel, whose project Common Ground with Prof Duncan Cameron will be an art installation and a talk on unsustainable production, food waste and new technologies, said: “We had already planned to make a film about people's relationship with food and the situation with Covid-19 made it even more timely.
“I'm delighted to have been involved in the Festival. This collaboration was one of the only projects that has been able to take place in the last few months and it has helped sustain me as an artist.”
Festival of the Mind 2020 will feature 100 collaborators, 35 exhibits and performances, 17 films and 25 specially-created podcasts.
