Festival of the Mind 2024

Academic staff from the School of Education are hosting a number of free events in the Festival of the Mind taking place this month, we are excited to welcome you to join in!

Festival of the Mind

Festival of the Mind sees the brightest minds from the University of Sheffield collaborate with the city’s cultural and creative industries, to help bring their research to life in exciting, entertaining and innovative ways, through a programme of free exhibitions, films, performances, workshops and talks. Open to everyone.

Explore the festival programme via the venue links at the top of the page, or read the brochure.


Our Stories, Our Voices: Growing up Multilingual with Chinese Heritage

Dr Sabine Little 

Sunday 22 September 1:00pm.

Sabine Little from the School of Education has worked with the Theatre Deli and seven co-researchers aged 11-16 to create a performance that explores the experiences of young people who have grown up as multilingual and of Chinese heritage.

Drawing on over 100 contributions from children and young people in multilingual communities, this diverse performance will include essays, poems, drawings, collages, and films to help make their personal experiences more publicly accessible with a focus on ensuring that research in multilingual communities, with multilingual children, asks the right questions and foregrounds the right stories.


Clay, Paper and Light: In Conversation with Racially Minoritised Survivors of Domestic Abuse

Dr Jilly Gibson-Miller 

Wednesday 25 September, 2:00 pm

In this talk you will hear about the process in creating the immersive exhibition Clay, Paper and Light which share journeys of healing and support of racially minoritised women surviving domestic abuse through art, ceramics and book binding.

See the exhibit at Futurecade.


School Meal Memories

Dr Heather Ellison 

Saturday 28 September, 2:00 pm

School Meal Memories is a documentary film developed with Ed Cartledge from Sort Of…Films and researchers leading the ESRC-funded project ‘The School Meals Service – Past, Present, and Future?’.

The Sheffield-based strand of the project has conducted a series of interviews with individuals across the UK centering on their memories of school meals, whether as a recipient of school meals themselves, the parent of a child having school meals, or a member of the teaching or catering staff at a school.

The film showcases the school meal memories of the headteacher of one of our partner schools, former students, members of the catering team and current pupils and their families.


For more information about our research, please visit the School Meals project website.


All events are taking place in The Spiegeltent, a beautiful early 20th century, Belgian, hand hewn pavilion traditionally used as a travelling dance hall and performance venue. The Spiegeltent is located in Barkers Pool during the festival. 

Mature student open evening

Are you 21 or over and interested in undergraduate study?

Join us on 4 December (5 to 8pm) to find out about returning to education as a mature student.