Author Archives: michaeleades2014

The Secret Diary of Bloomsbury – Oct 2017

November 5, 2017 by michaeleades2014

The Secret Diary of Bloomsbury was a multi-site installation for the Bloomsbury Festival 2017. The folklorist, artist and maker Elizabeth Dearnley and I installed twelve bird-boxes across Bloomsbury, each containing a ‘Secret Diary’. Diaries were themed to their locations – from the ‘Diary of Dreams’ in Treadwell’s Books, to the ‘Diary of Found Things’ in the Foundling Museum – and prompted people to share secrets, stories and memories of the area. Some of the diaries are still in place, filling […]

Categories: Bloomsbury, Exhibitions, Festivals, Projects, Surrealism, Uncategorized

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Bloomsbury Festival in a Box: Engaging Socially Isolated People with Dementia

February 28, 2017 by michaeleades2014

Between August 2013 and June 2014 I was Principal Investigator on an AHRC-funded research project called ‘Bloomsbury Festival in a Box: engaging socially isolated people with dementia’. On a basic level, this project aimed to take a peripatetic version of the Bloomsbury Festival, a community focussed arts festival in the heart of London, out to local residents living alone and with dementia. The idea here was to offer a chance for people to engage not just in the reception, but […]

Categories: Arts and Health, Festivals, Projects • Tags: ageing, arts and health, bloomsbury festival, dementia, Festivals, public engagement

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Ministry of Hope and Fear – Nov 2016

December 11, 2016 by michaeleades2014

As part of the third national Being Human festival of the humanities, in November 2016 I curated, with Dr Naomi Paxton, a programme of over 20 public engagement events, exhibitions and activities at the festival’s London hub in Senate House. The programme drew together researchers, artists and others from across the University of London colleges and academic bodies to create a ‘Ministry of Hope and Fear’. The programme played on the Being Human 2016 ‘hope and fear’ theme and also […]

Categories: Uncategorized

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Being Human: Hope and fear in 2016

September 28, 2016 by michaeleades2014

Our theme for the 2016 Being Human festival is ‘hope and fear’. We couldn’t have known how well chosen it would be. This has been a year in which fears around everything from Brexit, global terrorism, and the rise of political extremism across the world seem to have snapped into sharper focus. There’s no shortage of fear. At the same time however, as our programme demonstrates, there is also no shortage of hope. People have come forward with context, nuance, […]

Categories: Blog, Events, Festivals, Public Engagement • Tags: archives, Being Human Festival, curating, exhibition, Festivals, public engagement, school of advanced study

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The Body of Law: drawings by Isobel Williams Jun-Aug 2016

August 27, 2016 by michaeleades2014

The Body of Law, an exhibition of drawings by Isobel Williams, has been on display in Senate House University of London over the past two months. I organised the exhibition with Isobel and with Dr Judith Townend of the Institute of Advanced Legal Studies as part of the year-round programme of public engagement that I curate at the School of Advanced Study. The exhibition ran from June-August. It has been down for a couple of weeks after attracting a lot […]

Categories: Commissions/Collaborations, Events, Exhibitions, Public Engagement, research

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Public Engagement as Method – July 2016

July 10, 2016 by michaeleades2014

Pic – Blue plaque badges distributed by Dr Debbie Maxwell at ‘Public Engagement as Method in the Arts & Humanities. Public Engagement as Method in the Arts and Humanities – University of Sheffield, 5 July 2016 Last week I took part in a one-day symposium at the University of Sheffield on Public Engagement as Method in the Arts and Humanities. The day offered a welcome opportunity for both academics and practitioners involved in public engagement to reflect on how engaging […]

Categories: Being Human, Blog, Public Engagement, research, Uncategorized

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Festival in a Box dementia friendly showcase – June 2016

June 16, 2016 by michaeleades2014

On 15 June, I organised a Dementia friendly showcase for the ‘Bloomsbury Festival in a Box’ project at Age UK Camden’s Tavis House. Every year, the ‘Festival in a Box’ takes the Bloomsbury Festival into the homes of people living alone and with dementia in Bloomsbury and Camden – bringing a ‘cultural meals on wheels’ to some of Bloomsbury’s longest established residents. In 2016, the project has been running primarily as the Bloomsbury Festival’s embedded community outreach programme, although I […]

Categories: Arts and Health, Commissions/Collaborations, Exhibitions, Festivals, Public Engagement, research, Uncategorized

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Festival in a Box: a pop-up exhibition of stories – Oct 2015

December 23, 2015 by michaeleades2014

Back in late October (Friday 16), Dr Catriona Mcara and I curated a one day pop-up exhibition at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH), University of Edinburgh as part of the Luminate Festival of Creative Ageing. The event, ‘Festival in a Box: a pop-up exhibition of stories’ followed directly from our 2014 event Boxes of Delight: surrealism at 90. Drawing on Dr Mcara’s curatorial and exhibition making practice at the Leeds College of Art as well as […]

Categories: Arts and Health, Blog, Events, Exhibitions, Uncategorized • Tags: ageing, curating, dementia, festival in a box, Festivals, surrealism

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Festival in a Box: Archives Exhibition – Sept 2015

September 24, 2015 by michaeleades2014

Festival in a Box: Archives My exhibition ‘Festival in a Box: Archives’ is on display from 21 September to 30 November at the Leeds College of Art. The exhibition draws together selected texts, objects and artefacts from from the archives assembled during the AHRC-funded research project ‘Bloomsbury Festival in a Box: engaging socially isolated people with dementia’. Also on display are series of original photographs inspired by the contents of the archives. Between August 2013 and June 2014 the AHRC-funded research […]

Categories: Arts and Health, Exhibitions • Tags: archives, arts and health, bloomsbury festival, curating, dementia, exhibition, festival in a box, public engagement, surrealism

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Being Human Festival

June 28, 2015 by michaeleades2014

My main project at the moment is the Being Human festival of the humanities. I work on this in my professional capacity at the School of Advanced Study, University of London. Being Human started life in 2014 as the first (and only) national festival dedicated entirely to the humanities. It offers a forum for people to engage with some of the best work that is being done in the humanities and encourages researchers across disciplines to find inspiring and fun […]

Categories: Festivals, Projects • Tags: archives, arts and health, Being Human Festival, Festivals, public engagement, school of advanced study, surrealism

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Being Human Summer Social – June 10

June 28, 2015 by michaeleades2014

This post is my personal take on the ‘soft launch’ event for the 2015 Being Human festival – which I organised at Senate House on June 10 2015. The blog was originally published on the Being Human festival website on June 12 2015. A feast of the humanities Preparations for the second Being Human festival of the humanities got underway in earnest on Wednesday 10 June at our first ever Being Human Summer Social. More than 150 people from across the country came to […]

Categories: Blog, Festivals • Tags: Being Human Festival, Festivals, school of advanced study

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An ‘Unconference’ in a Box: Age Camp Leeds – June 2015

June 7, 2015 by michaeleades2014

Age Friendly Cities On Monday 1st of June I got up very early and took the train from King’s Cross up to Leeds for my first ever ‘unconference’. This was Age Camp Leeds, held at the Carriage Works Theatre and dedicated to the topic of creating an ‘age friendly city’. For those of you who have never been to one, an ‘unconference’ is effectively a conference with a defined focus – in this case ‘age friendly cities’ – but no […]

Categories: Arts and Health, Blog

Seaside Surrealism: Whitstable – April 2015

April 6, 2015 by michaeleades2014

One day project On Saturday 4th of April, 2015 I took a trip to the East Kent seaside town of Whitstable. As well as being a nice Easter weekend break, I saw this as the latest in a series of one-day excursions and ‘projects’ exploring the possibilities of what I have described before on this site, following Paul Nash, as ‘seaside surrealism’. I first became interested in this idea during my PhD, when I became aware of a sub-tradition of […]

Categories: Blog, Gallery, Projects, Surrealism • Tags: photography, seaside, surrealism

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Hacking the Archives – Nov 2014

January 25, 2015 by michaeleades2014

Hacking the Archives is an ongoing project funded by Arts Council England that I have been working on with digital artist Jaime Jackson of Salt Road. The project was launched in 2014 as part of the Being Human festival and is an active collaboration between the Ministry of Information Project (based in the School of Advanced Study), the Mass-Observation Archive, and a number of digital artists coordinated by Salt Road. Additional support has also been given by Adam Matthew and Orangeleaf […]

Categories: Commissions/Collaborations, Projects • Tags: archives, Being Human Festival, D-Fuse, Festivals, mass-observation, Ministry of Information

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Too Much Information: being human in a digital age Nov 2014

November 24, 2014 by michaeleades2014

To launch the first Being Human festival of the humanities in November 2014, I organised a one-day programme of events themed around the idea of ‘Too Much Information: Being Human in a Digital Age’. Intended as a public facing ‘anti-conference’, the day drew together some leading thinkers, and around 2,000 members of the public, to consider some of the following questions: What does it mean to be human in a digital age? When information is ever more readily available, how […]

Categories: Being Human

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The Human Library – Nov 2014

November 23, 2014 by michaeleades2014

In November 2014, as one of my own contributions to the Being Human festival of the humanities programme, I organised a ‘human library’ event in the Goldsmiths’ Reading Room of Senate House Library, University of London. Human Libraries have been around for a while, and are rooted in certain strands of European social activism. The idea is that instead of taking down books from shelves, ‘readers’ are given an opportunity to engage with the authors of those books one-to-one. For […]

Categories: Events • Tags: Being Human Festival, Festivals, libraries, public engagement, school of advanced study

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Boxes of Delight: Surrealism at 90 – Oct 2014

October 23, 2014 by michaeleades2014

In October 2014 I was invited to speak and deliver a workshop at the University of Edinburgh, organised by Dr Catriona Mcara as part of the Luminate Festival of Creative Ageing. This event followed on from my Bloomsbury Festival in a Box project, linking that research to Dr Mcara’s work on the memory boxes and other ‘heirloom’ works created by surrealist artists Dorothea Tanning (1910-2012), Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010), and Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), each of whom worked into their nineties. Our […]

Categories: Arts and Health, Events, Festivals, Surrealism • Tags: ageing, archives, arts and health, public engagement, surrealism

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Being Human at Glastonbury: the view from the field – July 2014

July 8, 2014 by michaeleades2014

My first Glastonbury Vivienne Westwood doesn’t like festivals. I know this because she opened her appearance at the 2014 Glastonbury Festival with just this assertion. Perhaps surprisingly for someone so closely associated with the punk movement, Westwood began her talk by stating that she’d never really been a big fan of all-night parties and has always been keen to get home to bed. I was glad to hear her say this, as it reminded me very much of my own […]

Categories: Blog, Festivals • Tags: Being Human Festival, D-Fuse, Festivals, fracking, glastonbury, public engagement

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Festival in a Box: sharing knowledge on dementia and the arts – May 2014

May 8, 2014 by michaeleades2014

In the dissemination stages of the Bloomsbury Festival in a Box project, in May 2014 I organised a knowledge share day that brought together leading practitioners in the arts and health and dementia, alongside researchers and artists associated with the Festival in a Box project and representatives from Age UK Camden. The main aim of the day was to provide an environment in which the lessons learned from the project could be contextualised in relation to both established and emerging interventions in this field. The […]

Categories: Arts and Health, Events, Festivals, Uncategorized

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Being Human: a curator’s perspective – April 2014

April 7, 2014 by michaeleades2014

Just before Easter, our steering committee met to discuss applications for funding for this year’s Being Human festival of the humanities. Representatives from the School of Advanced Study, the Arts and Humanities Research Council, and the British Academy came together to begin the difficult task of allocating funding, and whittling down more than 117 entries to an eventual 36 funded applications. One of the pleasures in taking part in this process, and seeing the Being Human applications coming in over […]

Categories: Blog • Tags: Being Human Festival, Festivals

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