Amazing work goes on behind university walls. New ideas constantly bounce from one laboratory or seminar room to the next. With a little help from Sheffield's creative community, that work and those ideas are let loose in the city throughout the Festival of the Mind.

Every other autumn, Festival of the Mind creates something new and exciting out of Sheffield University research. It brings academic and creative minds from Sheffield together to collaborate on projects that present an area of study to the public through art, film, music and more. All the subjects you would expect of academia are covered – architecture, science, engineering, history, music, health, literature, and so on – but in very non-academic ways.

The Spiegeltent – a glorious, early 1900s travelling concert hall constructed from wood, canvas and decorative stained glass windows – lands in Barker's Pool each Festival of the Mind and acts as the main festival venue, with other events and installations this year taking place at Millennium Gallery, Sheffield Winter Garden and Yorkshire Artspace's Persistence Works.

Festival of the Mind returns in September 2024 for its seventh edition. The programme for 2024 will focus on themes of creativity, participation, cohesion and learning.

Find out more about what to expect at the festival's three spaces:

Spiegeltent

Performances, screenings and talks will take to this beautiful stage in Barker’s Pool.

Head down for hands-on demos of robots used in uni research. Films of 1930s–50s Hillsborough. A talk exploring the language of mental health and illness. A techno music performance and workshop with Sheffield legends The Black Dog. And more – see the full schedule.

Open daily from 11am with refreshments available (closed Monday 23 September).

Futurecade

Immersive technology, art and research collide in this two-venue exhibition.

Featuring a sound and visual installation sharing the experiences of older hospital patients with vision impairment. An audio piece on representations of Jesus over the centuries. A soundtrack made from intergalactic signals captured by observatories surveying the night sky. A structure made using mycelium as a building material. And lots more.

At Millennium Gallery (closed Monday 23 September) and Sheffield Winter Garden.

Persistence Works

Yorkshire Artspace's Persistence Works will host exhibits on a range of themes.

There'll be a celebration of art from working class communities. Stop motion animations featuring puppets made with everyday consumer packaging materials, looking at the ‘life cycles’ of throwaway packaging. A work challenging ideas of frailty. And more.

Closed on Monday 23 September.

See the full Festival of the Mind 2024 programme.

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