The FUTURES Festival is back for another year! This autumn, we're bringing science, culture, and research to life in new and exciting ways, with something for all ages.

All across the South West, researchers will be heading out into shopping centres, churches, museums, the streets, theatres, nature reserves, the airwaves and online to share their work.  FUTURES is taking research directly to the people!

FUTURES Festival 2024 programme

The consortium of the region's five universities - Bath Spa University, Universities of Bath, Bristol and Exeter and Plymouth University - have been working with a range of creative practitioners, artists, researchers and audiences to devise events and activities that bring together science and arts to explore how research is tackling some of the big issues we face today.

Our programme of 25 different events and activities across September and October includes late-night museum openings, hands-on activities, exhibitions, storytelling sessions, walks, talks, quizzes, radio shows and much more!

FUTURES is a research engagement festival like no other.

Getting hands-on

Flagship FUTURES Festival events take place on the last weekend of September and first weekend in October. At the S.S. Great Britain in Bristol, the Princesshay Shopping Centre in Exeter and the Holburne Museum in Bath, audiences will have the opportunity to get hands-on with research and meet nearly 100 different researchers. Families will be able to explore research through a variety of exciting demonstrations and activities such as scavenger hunts through museum collections, donning virtual reality goggles and journeying to the depths of the ocean, getting crafty with art activities, testing out the latest medical equipment used to detect cancer, peering through high-powered microscopes and much more!

Images of Research

Passengers embarking from Bath Spa railway station will be able to experience Images of Research, an exhibition made up of imagery inspired by and taken directly from research happening at the University of Bath.

Getting social with media

I'm A Researcher - Ask Me Anything! are events taking place on the social news website Reddit. Over autumn 2024, researchers will take part in text-based conversations in real-time, connecting with audiences to help understand what parts of their work are most relevant to the wide and diverse global audience who use the site. Meanwhile, over on YouTube, the Kids Invent Stuff team will broadcast their FUTURES Invention Challenge film, sharing their (often hilarious) testing of an invention submitted by a young person.

Walking and talking

Take a walk with a researcher. Around Exeter city centre, Plymouth's Royal William Yard and the streets of Bath, we have various walks with something for everyone. If you are a geology fan, then join Dr Jodie Fisher for her Geo Trails walk in Plymouth. Or explore topics such as invasive Asian hornets, solar energy and fungi with researchers on walks around Exeter. Or with the digital immersive theatrical journey, Test Tubes and Time Travel, visit locations around Bath and unlock videos that reveal the stories behind historic scientific pioneers and meet some of the scientists and engineers working in Bath today.

Talking and listening

Expedition South West

Over the course of five days in September 2024, naturalists Leif Bersweden and Lucy Hodson are taking users of the social media platform Instagram on a natural history expedition across the South West heading from the beaches of Falmouth to the city centre of Bristol, sharing the region's natural heritage in #NatureGram. Along the way, they'll be meeting researchers and people working to understand and look after the biodiversity of these areas and invite users to share their experiences.

Over the airwaves

Working with community radio stations across the South West, our community radio partner, Stellaria Media, has connected people with researchers to explore a range of topics that interest them and their communities. The programme kicks off with a Media Commons Camp, where programme makers, community groups, and researchers spend a weekend sharing experiences and creating broadcast programmes. Over the course of the year, the team has also co-produced radio content that will be broadcast on community radio stations in autumn 2024 with our FUTURES On Air programme.

FUTURES: A Festival of Discovery

The FUTURES Festival has been running since 2018 and is a unique collaboration between public engagement professionals at Bath Spa University, the Universities of Bath, Bristol and Exeter and Plymouth University. The 2022 to 2025 editions have been funded by UK Research and Innovation as part of the Horizon Europe Guarantee and between 2018 and 2021, funded by the European Commission under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie actions as part of European Researchers' Night.

Dean Veall is Deputy Head of Public Engagement at the University of Bath