Alongside our walking tours, visitors to the 2025 FUTURES Festival could book a ticket for one of our workshops. Whether they were interested in creative writing, encouraging growth in our natural environment, or honing their artistic skills, these free events offered audiences the chance to try something new.
Workshops were hosted throughout the FUTURES weekend, featuring research from a range of disciplines, and using creative, hands-on techniques to invite members of the public to get involved. Each workshop was free to enter, and was designed to create a space for collaboration, discussion, and imagination.
Taking place at Exeter Phoenix, the first of these was hosted by Exeter Seed Bank, and invited participants to join one of their popular seed packing sessions, while introducing them to ongoing projects, such as their new Community Soil Testing Kits. Exeter Seed Bank are regular visitors to Exeter Phoenix, promoting the ancient craft of seed saving, and engaging new audiences with their community projects. The workshop brought in a highly engaged crowd, and Seed Bank continued sharing their work at our Sunday Pop-Up Curiosity Shop. Many attendees left excited by new ideas on how they could implement what they had learnt, with one participant noting that this work “Helps protect all our FUTURES. Great idea and done well.”
For those looking to explore their creative side could get involved with a poetry workshop, ‘Talismans, Kit Lists, and Recipes for Survival’ organised by Professor Hugh Roberts from the Department of Languages, Cultures and Visual Studies. This highlighted the power of poetry in times of global conflict, and encouraged participants to draw inspiration from a new generation of Ukrainian war poets and produce their own work. Since the FUTURES Festival, Professor Roberts has expanded on this project, hosting workshops as part of Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities.
Budding artists could take part in ‘Visual Revelations: Drawing Comics for Fun and Wellbeing’, hosted by Dr Caitlin Kight. The interactive event taught attendees about the basics of developing their own comics, while inviting discussion on the wellbeing benefits of this kind of playful creation. The fully-booked workshop was praised by attendees of all ages, with visitors commenting on how this fun activity helped them express themselves. One young artist planned to take this even further, declaring: “I really loved it because it gave me ideas for new comic strips”!
Each of these workshops, while offering their own distinctive activities, provided a hands-on way for participants to discover research for themselves, and learn first-hand about the benefits of research taking place across both the University and the community. If you would like to find out more about the research engagement activities which took place at the 2025 FUTURES Festival, check out our other blog posts.
FUTURES is a free festival of discovery which takes place across venues in Bath, Bristol, Cornwall, Devon, Exeter and Plymouth, funded by the UKRI.
