During this year’s Festival of Creative Learning, 19th-23rd February 2018, more than 130 events took place across the University organised by over 120 Event Organisers. This is the second outing of the Festival and particularly noticeable this year was the unprecedented number of events that were fully booked, often with long waiting lists, days or even weeks before the Festival began.
The Festival is an opportunity to try something different, develop an idea, make mistakes, build, paint, debate, and so on. The Event Organisers are all staff or students who commit to planning, delivering and evaluating their ideas voluntarily. They may be deviating widely (or wildly!) from their subject area, combining passions with a PhD or building on the legacy of the Festival by delivering an annual event. They may never have organised an event before, or they may have managed multi-day, international conferences. We are not really concerned by polished perfection, but are more interested in supporting people to challenge ideas, themselves and others in a multitude of creative ways. The emphasis is on encouraging Event Organisers, and by extension their participants, to enjoy themselves.
We believe that the short film this year, produced by University of Edinburgh alumnus Archie Crofton, is a beautiful representation of the celebratory, stimulatory, and multi-sensory nature of the Festival. It can be viewed in full below, and on Media Hopper:
Pop-up events continue throughout the year. Find out more about these, and the Festival itself, at www.festivalofcreativelearning.ed.ac.uk or on social media through Twitter and Instagram @UoE_FCL, and Facebook @FCLUoE.
