Virginia Dare

To create a Being Human Festival hub in Portsmouth during the festival in November 2020. Comprising a number of events, the planned activities will respond to the theme of 'New Worlds', exploring ideas of world-building in the past, the present and the future. Events include a historical performance about the settlers of Roanoke, a long lost colony in the Americas, who set sail from Portsmouth for the new world. It will also include participatory events such as writing and film workshops, and a round table discussion about how culture in the time of Covid has seen social media allow for us to escape and imagine new worlds in the present. Talks about utopia and dystopia in Victorian literature, 'American Horror Story', and the idea of new worlds in science fiction are also planned. These activities will be organised into events focussed on the three time periods of the subtitle, and will be extended by a short series of community film screenings to reach a broad audience.