Kate (left) and Helen (right) Storey

To mark the 75th anniversary of the death of Henry Wellcome and the founding of the Wellcome Trust, we are publishing a series of 14 features on people who have been significant in the Trust’s history. In our 13th piece, writer and researcher Marek Kohn looks at Helen and Kate Storey, science and art collaborators.

Searching for a way to understand the development of the human embryo, as inspiration for a collection of dresses, designer Helen Storey sat on her bedroom floor with her sketches around her. She shut her eyes, and her hands started to move, shaping cells and describing their progress towards a recognisably human form. By re-enacting the mime, she was able to convey the images to her colleagues in her studio who had never looked down the microscopes at chick embryos in her sister Kate’s laboratory.

Her gestures acted out the difference between artists and scientists too. For scientists, ‘hand-waving’ is an attempt to make up for the lack of a coherent argument. For artists, hand-waving may be a productive and necessary form of expression. If artists and scientists are to collaborate, they may have to embrace their differences – and, as Helen Storey found, devise new idioms of their own.

Kate and Helen Storey’s project, ‘Primitive Streak’, arose from Kate’s work as a developmental biologist and Helen’s experience as a fashion designer. Putting their expertise together, the sisters produced a fashion collection chronicling human embryonic development. In 27 garments, it covered the first 1000 hours of human life, tracing ten milestones from conception to the appearance of limbs and organs. The ‘primitive streak’, which appears about a fortnight after conception, marks a pivotal stage in development: it gives the embryo the beginnings of a top and a bottom, and cells that are destined to give rise to organs assemble themselves by moving through it.

In 1997 the proposal was one of the first six grant recipients in the Wellcome Trust’s Sciart award scheme, receiving £25 000. It has flouted the first principles of fashion by persisting ever since: 14 years later it is still going strong. Helen Storey herself has woven a singular career with dimensions in fashion, design, art and science. She is now Professor of Fashion and Science at the London College of Fashion, while Kate Storey is Professor of Neural Development at the University of Dundee.

When worlds collide

The germ of the idea was a leaflet about the Sciart scheme that Kate sent to Helen, with a yellow sticky note on it bearing a question mark. “I saw it initially as a way of celebrating my understanding and feelings about what I did,” Kate says. The sisters’ decision to work together was a personal echo of the Wellcome Trust’s optimistic proposition that “something interesting might emerge from enabling collaborative work between artists and scientists”, as Ken Arnold, now the Trust’s Head of Public Programmes, put it at the time.

Kate’s suggestion came in the wake of a turbulent period for Helen, which had included the very public collapse of her fashion design business. Now her sister proposed engaging with science. “I found doing the whole project quite frightening,” Helen says. “I barely had any science qualifications of my own, so I was very lucky that it was my sister who was my teacher.”

She was also fortunate to be able to visit her sister’s laboratory, then at the University of Oxford. “I said ‘I’d better come and look down a microscope and see what you’ve been seeing all these years’,” Helen recalls. “The more I learned about her world, the more difficult I thought my job was going to be.” And she was “terrified of making a mistake, of misinterpreting the science, oversimplifying it, or abstracting it to the point that there was no pathway back to it for the viewer”.

As for the scientist of the partnership, Kate was worried about the art for its own sake. In her words, “it would not work if the designs didn’t stand by themselves as pieces of art that were beautiful in themselves”. Kate re-drew some of Helen’s drawings, but she was not looking for textbook correctness. “I don’t want it to look like it does down a microscope; I want it to convey the sense that we have about it when we look down a microscope,” she says.

With so many ways to fail, and so few pointers toward success in an unexplored field, it was hardly surprising that Helen found herself on the verge of giving up. Her project diary records her growing dismay: one entry reads: “feel out of control, I’m not designing, I’m taking visual dictation”.

Sweeping, luxurious, fantastical creations

Helen had to locate the science within herself, as she told BBC Radio 4 in 2000, to respond to it in a visual and emotional way; thus she found herself tracing the forms with her hands, and the dresses took shape. They were sweeping, luxurious, fantastical creations: a ‘thousand sperm coat’ made by embroidering nylon sperm onto a soluble fabric, which was then dissolved away, a dress boasting sperm with Perspex heads and chiffon tails, a silk ‘chromosome kimono’, a spinal column dress emblazoned with a DNA pattern and 8000 optic fibres, representing nerves.

Doing justice to the origins of the heart proved a particularly formidable challenge, but the solution has proved to be one of the most memorable items in the collection. The Storeys took their cue from the fact that the cells that join together to make the heart, by forming two tubes that fuse together, start off above the cells from which the brain arises. They enlisted the milliner Philip Treacy to design a ‘heart tube hat’, with the two tubes arching down to the shoulders. Viewers can follow the progress of the tubes through the three dresses that follow in the sequence, ending up with one in which the heart tube is fully folded. That design was stubborn too, but Helen solved it by putting feathers on the back to create a ‘heart bird’. “It looked brilliant, and it looked funny, and it took off on its own,” says Kate.

So did the collection as a whole. ‘Primitive Streak’ made its debut at London’s Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1997; the following year it reached China, as part of the British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s cultural entourage. The only Wellcome Trust Sciart project to have been toured abroad by the British Council, it has appeared in the USA and several European countries beyond the UK. In 2010, the Trust provided it with extension funding, as a result of which ‘Primitive Streak’ has a website and two new dresses, representing the development of the lung. Dresses are touring the UK again in 2011.

Kate saw the new funding as an opportunity to provide far more scientific information than had been possible when ‘Primitive Streak’ first appeared. Back then, websites were still somewhat exotic, and Kate’s scientific details were confined to a few sentences at the bottom of the exhibition labels. The new website connects the dresses to the science and brings them into the 21st century. The Trust’s Sciart initiative was a fin-de-siècle vision, looking forward to the new millennium and back at a century in which the estrangement between art and science had been increasingly marked. Art-science projects, it was hoped, could serve as bridges spanning the two domains and the gap between science and the public. Since then, cultural ecosystems have been transformed by the internet. People have become used to tracing their own paths through knowledge. Boundaries have faded as links have multiplied. A measure of the distance we have travelled is that the links to educational resources and original research papers on the ‘Primitive Streak’ site are just what people now expect.

Developing new dresses for the collection itself proved unexpectedly difficult. Helen compares it to revisiting a novel and trying to write a new chapter. “I didn’t realise when something is finished how truly finished it really is,” she reflects. “It’s been the most difficult thing I’ve ever designed, really.”

Finished or otherwise, however, ‘Primitive Streak’ had not run its course. “It’s good to be able to continue something that still seems to have a lot of resonance and cultural power,” Helen observes. “I put that down to the universality of the subject matter – it being both simultaneously a fashion collection and about our human origins.”

The ‘Heart Tube Hat’ design from ‘Primitive Streak’. Photo: Justine; model: Korinna at Models 1

Beauty and elegance

It is also because Kate, as a scientist, and Helen, as a fashion designer, were eager to embrace beauty. Siân Ede, Deputy Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, opens her 2008 book ‘Art and Science’ with a trenchant observation: “Contemporary scientists often talk about ‘beauty’ and ‘elegance’; artists hardly ever do.” In that respect scientists are actually closer to the general public than artists are, even though a school student who sees elegance in a dress might not be able to appreciate the elegance of an equation.

Having turned away from beauty, artists may also wish to keep their distance from science, and to make any engagement a critical one. “I think the notion was unless some new meaning or some challenge to established meanings was being worked at,” Ken Arnold observes, “then frankly it was just decorative; it was far too enslaved to the world of science; it was really doing some rather simplistic PR work for an overly powerful area of intellectual enterprise – so why should artists help scientists feel better about themselves and be better loved by the public?”

‘Primitive Streak’ helped Arnold change his own views about how art can engage fruitfully with science. “Big ideas or interesting ideas don’t have to be very difficult to understand, and they don’t necessarily have to be very profound,” he says. Kate had wanted the designs to be beautiful; beauty was what Helen did. Although they were too preoccupied with simply getting the collection done to dwell much on its possible audiences, the Storeys found themselves with a work that had impressive educational power and captured the imagination of ordinary viewers – particularly girls and young women, who were shown a story about physical development told through fashion, a phenomenon intimately entwined with their own personal development.

‘Primitive Streak’ is about celebration rather than confrontation, and does not venture into the ethical issues surrounding unborn life either. It is not typical in its bright outlook. Three of the other five winners in the first round of Sciart awards were concerned with body misfortunes: cleft lips, anorexia nervosa and phantom limb pain. A more recent work, Marc Quinn’s ‘Evolution’, contrasts starkly with the exuberant Storey creations. These are embryos in a heroic, classical mode. Gallery visitors had recoiled from his sculptures of people with missing limbs: he created the embryo sculptures in response, to show that all humans are grotesque, in conventional terms, at the outset of their lives.

Quinn does have a place for conventional beauty: it can be seen at the entrance to Wellcome Collection, the Trust’s public venue, in the form of his sculpture ‘Silvia Petretti – Sustiva, Tenofivir, 3TC (HIV)’, which is cast from wax containing drugs prescribed to Petretti to counter her HIV infection. On the other hand, when commissioned with Trust support to create a work for the National Portrait Gallery, he gave the Gallery its first conceptual portrait. Within its frame were colonies of bacteria containing DNA from Sir John Sulston, a pioneer of the Human Genome Project and former director of the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridgeshire. Quinn boasted that the work was “the most realist portrait in the Portrait Gallery”. Sulston noted that as a sample of his DNA, it was a detail rather than a complete picture – but still enough to identify him.

Sulston’s DNA sample was the major part of his contribution to the project, which did not require the kind of sustained collaboration demanded by ‘Primitive Streak’. The balance between science and art varies greatly from project to project, as does the working relationship between the collaborators. ‘Medusae’, a Trust Sciart project, was also the work of siblings, Dorothy and Tom Cross; they collected box jellyfish together off the coast of Queensland, but Dorothy’s focus was a film she made about an amateur scientist who had studied jellyfish in Ireland, while Tom’s was the biomechanics of how the Australian jellyfish swam.

By the time the original Sciart programme came to an end, in 2006, it had disbursed £2.8 million among 118 projects. The Wellcome Trust continues to fund art projects under the umbrella of its Engaging Science programme. In 2007 it opened Wellcome Collection, a permanent centre for science-art interaction, having transformed the 1932 Wellcome Building on London’s Euston Road to house it. Opened up to create a popular café gathering-place and a nest of dramatic gallery spaces, the building is a spectacular expression of cultural and creative confidence. The relentless jollity so prevalent in popular science presentations is entirely absent, as is the underlying anxiety about boring or upsetting the public. Siân Ede notes the coincidence that Tate Modern has grown up around the same time (it opened in 2000) and has had a blockbuster impact on public awareness of contemporary art. Tate Modern and Wellcome Collection may not be collaborators as such, but they are kindred spirits, and together have done much to make both art and science part of the cultural commons. They have shared their roles, too: Ken Arnold notes that Tate Modern has presented plenty of science, and feels that Wellcome Collection has itself helped to make contemporary art more accessible.

Ede, who sat on panels judging Sciart proposals, believes that the Trust was particularly good at bringing artists and scientists together, because “right from the outset, they didn’t expect artists to explain science or be a kind of press agency for it. They were accepting that art can engage with the science world in quite complex, complicated and non-direct ways.”

They have, in significant measure, Henry Wellcome to thank for that. Wellcome Collection was in part a way to rethink the Trust’s relationship with its founder’s huge, and hugely idiosyncratic, collection of medical, anthropological and miscellaneous objects. His interest in anthropology and history rooted the venue in the humanities as well as in science, while his taste for curiosities, displayed in a gallery dedicated to the ‘Medicine Man’, strikes a keynote that resounds through Wellcome Collection’s contemporary exhibits.

These are, above all, visual. “One of the problems I have with quite a lot of science-and-art activity, particularly the stuff that is insistent that it’s much more profoundly challenging than anything that is purely decorative,” remarks Arnold, “is, actually, it’s got no place in the public realm because it’s so dull!” This is not an accusation that can be levelled at the stuff of ‘Medicine Now’, a permanent gallery that includes artworks reflecting on medical themes. One exhibit that would not be out of place in a design museum is a complex, impeccably geometric egg-like glass form. Its purpose is not decorative, however: the artist Luke Jerram offers it as an alternative representation of the H1N1 swine flu virus to the common artificially coloured images that, he believes, may magnify the public’s fear of viruses.

‘Medicine Now’ is dominated, however, by the hulking form entitled ‘I Can Not Help the Way I Feel’ (by John Isaacs), a two-metre-high humanoid figure engulfed by its own obesity, its flesh resembling a mass of heaped malignancies. Wellcome Collection is adept at making honourable use of monstrosity, curiosity’s frightful face. That is in large part because, as Ede puts it, “they made science respectable and serious and intellectual instead of games”.

Wellcome Collection affirms how established art-science collaboration has become, and highlights the field’s continuing vigour. But it remains a challenge for would-be collaborators, because it is based on unavoidably asymmetrical relationships. Artists stand to gain new works, while scientists stand to gain understanding of the context for their own work, which may be valuable to them but not crucial. So artists and scientists need some prior understanding of each other’s worlds if a collaboration is to get off the ground. A study that evaluated the Wellcome Trust Sciart programme quoted a science commentator who described a “puzzled engagement” between the artist and the scientist. That pretty much summed up the general experience – but, as the commentator added, it could often be a life-enhancing encounter for them both.

Meanwhile, Helen Storey has undertaken a series of art-science projects since ‘Primitive Streak’, organising them around the Helen Storey Foundation, which she set up with her longstanding business partner Caroline Coates. In recent years, she has collaborated with Tony Ryan, a chemist specialising in polymers at the University of Sheffield. They are working on products such as clothes that purify air, and a bottle that can be dissolved in hot water when it is empty.

The collaboration led to her appointment as Visiting Professor of Material Chemistry at Sheffield, although she hasn’t become a scientist. “I’m neither a designer that makes things just because I want to make things, or an artist that does something just because it’s beautiful,” she reflects. “I’m not sure what I am.”

Most likely she is one of a kind. Her career and her way of working are hers alone. But by showing that an individual can make designs without just being a designer, create art without really being an artist, and engage with science without being a scientist, she shows that weaving it all together is an art that can be mastered.

Find out more about activities marking the Wellcome Trust’s 75th anniversary, including links to other features as they are published.

Marek Kohn is an author and journalist based in Brighton. He holds a degree in neurobiology from the University of Sussex and a PhD from the University of Brighton, where he is a Fellow in the Faculty of Arts. Much of his work explores the implications of scientific thinking for ideas about human nature and society. His most recent works are ‘Turned Out Nice: How the British Isles will change as the world heats up’ and ‘Trust: Self-interest and the common good’. Earlier works include ‘A Reason For Everything: Natural selection and the English imagination’ and ‘As We Know It: Coming to terms with an evolved mind’.

Image credit: Wellcome Images (top image)

Further reading

Primitive Streak

Helen Storey Foundation

Glinkowski P, Bamford A. Insight and Exchange: An evaluation of the Wellcome Trust’s Sciart programme. London: Wellcome Trust; 2009.

Anna Dumitriu with a Winogradsky column

“The importance of the public understanding of microbiology cannot be underplayed. Many businesses play on public fears in order to add value to their products, and newspapers and TV shows fill our minds with images of bacteria as armies of tiny monsters ready to attack unless we buy some new handwash or detergent.

There is a huge amount of scaremongering around ‘superbugs’ in hospitals, with press coverage grossly out of proportion to the number of cases occurring.

But what should we really be worrying about, and what, in terms of the relationship between humans and bacteria, is normal? As an artist, I’m fascinated by these questions. I collaborate closely with microbiologists and other scientists to make art that helps people engage more directly with the bacteria living within, on and around them.

My current solo exhibition, ‘Normal Flora‘, showcases some of the work I have created using live bacteria. This includes an antique Edwardian dress on which the existing white-on-white embroidery, known as whitework, has been pigmented with a bacterium called Chromobacterium violaceum. These bacteria change colour from white to purple when other bacteria of the same type are nearby.

In another piece I used Staphylococcus aureus bacteria taken from my own body alongside a multi-resistant strain, MRSA, to create designs on a quilt. I used different microbiological methods to create different patterns of growth of bacteria, which I then transferred onto the quilt. The piece has been autoclaved, so it contains no infectious material, but each square in the quilt shows a different aspect of the fight against MRSA.

Like the quilt, a lot of my work is tactile, decorative and aesthetically pleasing, but it also has a dark side. I like the tension between the fact that bacteria are extremely beautiful, fascinating organisms and the disgust and horror they bring about in people.

At college we once debated about whether all art is a political act, and, in a way, I think my work is political. I’m interested in conveying a bit more of the reality of the situation, helping equip the wider public with the tools needed to understand the issues.

I try to use bugs from my own environment when I can. People think that something with bacteria on it is dirty, but the reality is that they are everywhere. Whether we need to be worried about them or not depends on the type, number and location.”

Anna Dumitriu, artist

For more on Anna’s work, including the Communicating Bacteria project, funded by a Wellcome Trust Arts Award, see Normal Flora.

This feature also appears in issue 68 of Wellcome News.

Bonfire Night may be over, but the dazzling array of events funded by our Public Engagement awards shows no sign of fizzling out. Here’s a quick summary of what’s on over the next month.

November

The exhibition Re-Framing Disability: Portraits from the Royal College of Physicians, is now running at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies, where it will remain until January 2012. Uncovering the extraordinary hidden histories behind 17th – 19th Century portraits of disabled people, many of whom earned a living exhibiting themselves to the public, this exhibition looks at the impact of these portraits today through contemporary responses from disabled participants.

Air Pressure, a sound installation about the last remaining farmer living at the end of the runway at Narita International Airport in Japan, is on at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester until 12 February 2012. Using sound recordings and film, it offers the audience an opportunity to experience life and work on this farm, and to address debates on the impact of aircraft noise on our well-being.

Cardboard Citizen’s stage production of Mincemeat, a wartime tale of hidden identity and deception, has been adapted for radio. It will be broadcast on BBC Radio 3 at 8:30 pm on 13 November.

Zombie Science Z1, a live comedy show exploring the science of the undead, is running at 7:30 pm on 15, 16 and 17 November as part of the London Horror Festival. It discusses how a zombie outbreak might occur, what zombies would be like and – most importantly of all – how to stop them, by examining a variety of biomedical topics such as infectious diseases, virology and genetic modification.

Still on

Penny Dreadful‘s Etherdrome, a theatre work looking at the discovery of anaesthesia in 1850’s America, will shortly conclude its tour of the UK and Ireland. It’s at Jackson’s Lane theatre in London from 9 – 12 November.

Shock Head Soul by Simon Pummell, which had its UK premiere in October at London Film Festival, will be shown at the Copenhagen International Documentary Film Festival from 3 – 13 November. It tells the story of Daniel Paul Schreber, who published ‘Memoirs of My Nervous Illness’ in 1903, one of the most remarkable studies of ‘madness from the inside’ ever written.

Primate Cinema – Apes as Family by Rachel Mayeri explores the inner worlds of chimps. Mayeri, who has been observing how chimps respond to cartoons, documentaries and feature films, has created a film especially for them. It’s being shown at Arts Catalyst in London until 13 November 2011.

The Anatomy Season from the Clod Ensemble, continues to run at various venues across London until 10 December. This programme uses performances, conversations and workshops to explore the relationship between anatomy and performance.

Abnormal: Towards a Scientific Model of Disability by Ju Gosling has been touring the UK and will be at the Hunterian Museum in London until 14 January. The exhibition uses digital imagery and installation to explore the social construction of disability. There is a free workshop on 11 November exploring the issues raised in the exhibition.

Going Dark is a new one man show developed by Sound&Fury exploring vision in the context of a planetarium. It is currently on a tour of the UK, finishing in London on 24 March 2012.

The University of Oxford Botanic Garden’s Medicinal Plants Trail is available to visit on an on-going basis. Visitors can borrow a ‘first aid kit’ full of body-based experiments to take with them on the trail.

Advance notice

Looking ahead to next month, Gina Czarnecki’s solo show opens at the Bluecoat in Liverpool on 9 December, which will include artworks from her projects Wasted, Contagion and Quarantine.

Many thanks to our Public Engagement Advisor Tom Ziessen and Arts Advisor Meroë Candy for the information.

Tony Heaton from Shape and Bridget Telfer from RCP collect their award

This week, the Royal College of Physicians (RCP) and arts organisation Shape have won an Ability Media International award for helping to build a more inclusive world for disabled people with their exhibition of portraits, Re-framing disability: portraits from the Royal College of Physicians.

Heralded by the international panel of judges as both ‘inspired’ and ‘challenging’, Re-framing disability won the ‘Visual Arts Award 2011’. The result of a partnership between the RCP and Shape, which works to improve access to culture for disabled people, the exhibition explores rare portraits of disabled people from the 17th to 19th centuries, uncovers their hidden histories and looks at their impact today through contemporary responses from 27 disabled participants across the UK.

Bridget Telfer, RCP project curator, explained, “We are delighted to receive this award in recognition of the exhibition. One of the aims of this project was to reduce the cultural invisibility of disabled people in traditional museum displays and to empower disabled people to take control of their own histories and identities. It is the 27 disabled participants that I really need to thank for all their hard work. Only through their voices and views may we hope – in the words of one participant – to encourage an ‘acceptance and celebration of difference’”.

The AMI awards, created by Leonard Cheshire Disability in 2009, identify outstanding creative projects that encourage a more inclusive world for disabled people.

Re-framing disability was supported by a Wellcome Trust People Award and the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA) Documentation Improvement Grant.

The exhibition is touring to venues across the UK throughout 2011/12. It is currently on display at the University of Leicester’s School of Museum Studies until the end of January 2012. Further details about touring venues and the online exhibition can be found on the RCP website, or on Welcome Collection’s blog.

Calling all who enjoyed playing with plasticine as a child! We’re hoping this is a chance for you to rediscover your childhood, and we are providing the materials and opportunity to showcase your talents!

In the run-up to this festive time of year we’re creating an alternative festive tree covered with decorations on a scientific theme. We’re putting together festive packs containing a spectrum of fluorescent modelling materials and sparkly threads. From these packs you can fashion your own decorations and hang them on your own tree at home.

Use your imagination and try mixing and experimenting with colours to build up patterns, spikes and swirls. Maybe you’ve always wanted to make festive bacteria, a seasonal virus or a decorative neuron – the more imaginative the better!

This year we’re gauging interest in this idea, so we only have 40 packs available on a first-come-first serve basis.  The kits allow you to make around five decorations.  Staff at the Francis Crick Institute and the Wellcome Trust, and local communities will also be taking part, adorning a ‘tree of life’ in the Wellcome Trust building.

But wait!  Because we really want to see everyone’s creations we’re asking participants to upload photos to our collection of science-based decorations on Flickr.  We’ll also be giving away a prize for the most imaginative and beautiful creation.

Here’s a little demo video to help get you started, and if you need further inspiration take a look at our selection of images which happen to look festive.

We can’t wait to see what you’ll come up with!

This project is a collaboration with Dr Lizzie Burns, a science-based artist and visiting academic in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics in the University of Oxford.  Visit www.sciencetolife.org for more information about her artwork and workshops.

UPDATE: There’s been an enormous demand for our festive packs and sadly we’ve run out – apologies if you missed out. To those of you who received them, we’re all really excited to see what you make! Don’t forget to share pictures of your creations to the Flickr pool, and if you see/make any other sciencey decorations not involving our packs, feel free to add those too!

Daksha's work will be shown at Manchester Piccadilly’s Metrolink platform until the end of December. Credit: Joel Fildes

Artist and PhD researcher Daksha Patel has used Wellcome Images to create a series of maps of Manchester, linking environmental data to the inside of the human body.

“Our bodies are permeable: the city enters our bodies through our skin, our lungs and our ears. I wanted to question this idea of fixed borders, of enclosing spaces – which is central to map making – by merging the boundaries of the body and the city,” says Daksha Patel, an artist and PhD researcher at Northumbria University.

Her works for the ‘Diffusion’ project look at the ways in which people construct cities and are in turn affected by the cities they inhabit.

Commissioned to produce a new series of drawings for the lightboxes at Manchester Piccadilly station, Patel turned to Wellcome Images for inspiration. “I used this collection as a starting-point for the series of drawings, in which I map environmental data upon structures of the internal body.”

Following a period of research at the Human Geography department at Manchester Metropolitan university, she worked with Geographical Information Systems to map data about Manchester’s growth, air quality and noise levels onto biological structures.

The drawings were commissioned by the Hamilton Project and are being shown at Manchester Piccadilly’s Metrolink platform, until 30 December 2011. The project was supported by the National Lottery through Arts Council England and is an associate event for this year’s Shisha-initiated Asia Triennial Manchester (ATM11).

Diffusion 1.4: Lung tissue (directly above, by Spike Walker) and Manchester orbital motorways (uppermost image).

Diffusion 1.1: Alveolar spaces in the lungs (directly above, by David Gregory and Debbie Marshall) as a contour map of Manchester (uppermost image, in red) with a choropleth map (green) showing 3+ car ownership per household in Greater Manchester.

Diffusion 1.2: A mast cell with histamine granules (directly above, from the University of Edinburgh) as a dot map showing sites of air pollution emissions in Greater Manchester (uppermost image).

This feature also appears in issue 69 of ‘Wellcome News’

February may bring on relentless wintry chills, but the activity of the Trust’s public engagement awards programme shows no signs of cooling down this month. Here’s a summary of what is on offer over the coming weeks:

Your teeth will grind if you miss the chance to meet Gina Czarnecki at the Bluecoat galleries in Liverpool this Saturday (4 February, 2-3.30pm). The award-winning artist has a free exhibit featuring films, artwork and sculptures to highlight human relationships with disease, evolution and genetics. Plus you can see her at work on the Palaces sculpture, which contains hundreds of milk teeth donated by children from all over the UK.

Let Sara Rankin bring you up to speed on stem cell research at another Bluecoat event on Wednesday 8 February (4.30-5.30pm). The Imperial College London professor gives a gentle introductory talk on the topic, entitled ‘Everything you need to know about stem cells – a beginner’s guide for the non-scientist’. Given Sara’s past work with Gina Czarnecki on the Wasted sculpture series (on display at the Bluenote until 19^th February), this talk should be a vivid affair. The event is free, but advance booking is necessary.

Also on Wednesday 8 February (6-7.30pm) at the Bluecoat, both Sara and Gina will be guest speakers at a debate asking: ‘Should living people be able to donate their own human tissue to art?’ This is also free to attend, and you can book places in advance here.

‘Stand-up mathematician’ Matt Parker and comedian Timandra Harkness are taking on lies, damn lies, and laughable statistics in their new show ‘Your Days Are Numbered’. Find joy in their paean to bizarre health-related figures and the oft-crazy reporting based on these. The tour begins at the Exeter Phoenix on 8 February, with plenty of dates across the country throughout the month and in April.

Have you ever wondered how you manage to stay tuned in to one conversation amidst a sea of noise at a party? The Clerks will explain all about the cocktail party effect (more technically termed as ‘auditory streaming’) during their choral performance Roger go to Yellow Three, taking place at St Paul’s Hall in Huddersfield on 9 February.  You can hear the group discuss their project beforehand on BBC Radio 3 at 12.15pm on 4 February.

Air Pressure, an immersive multimedia installation at the Whitworth Art Gallery in Manchester, tells the rousing story of a hardy family of Japanese farmers who continue to ply their trade despite the opening of Narita International Airport on their doorstep in the 1970s. The exhibit is in place until 12 February.

The Anglia Ruskin Drama Studio in Cambridge plays host to MUST on 13 February. New York performance artist Peggy Shaw conducts an artistic analysis of her own body to see what ghosts of the past she can exhume from the cracks and creases of her joints and bones. Another performance takes place at the Glasgow Western Infirmary Creative Space on 16 February.

Immerse your faculties in a ‘Flavour Sense-Nation’ at the Brighton Science Festival on Saturday 18 February. Funded by a Wellcome Trust People Award made to ActionDog, the exhibit explores the science behind taste, touch, smell, sight and sound, along with the complex reactions that occur when our senses collide.

The evening of Wednesday 29 February sees the Lates series return to London’s Science Museum for an interactive foray into the world of surgery. The Science of Surgery event includes the People Award-funded ‘Your heart in their hands or your hands in their heart’: a simulation of a coronary angiography procedure to image and treat arterial blockages. Audience members can experience the procedure as part of the surgical team or from the perspective of the patient. Professor Roger Kneebone (a veteran of surgery reenactments who we’ve blogged about before) will discuss the history and future of surgery, and describe how the expertise of other professionals—from musicians to taxi drivers—have influenced surgical practice over the ages.

Still on

Several films by Daria Martin are currently showing at the MK Gallery until 8 April. Her latest piece ‘Sensorium Tests’ delves into the remarkable world of people who experience mirror-touch synaesthesia, a condition that results in individuals feeling sensations of contact when seeing others around them being touched.

Going Dark, a theatrical experience following astronomer Max, asks whether the best way to view and explore the heavens is in fact in total darkness. You can read more in our blog post about it. The show is on a national tour throughout February and March.

Fuel Theatre’s Body Pods are a series of podcasts by artists and scientists, posted monthly throughout 2012. Each one will divulge all sorts of grisly details about one part of the body. Last month’s edition, the Ear, was featured on the Guardian’s Science Weekly podcast. Check Fuel Theatre’s site next week for an installment addressing the heart.

Advanced notice

In Autobiographer, Melanie Wilson uses lyrical text, immersive staging and an enigmatic performance style to reveal a portrait of a life refracted through the lens of dementia. The show takes place at London’s Toynbee Studios from 17 April to 5 May.

Fatigue has never looked sexier than in Richard Fenwick’s new film Exhaustion, which chronicles a professional athlete’s physical state throughout an intense workout in super slow motion (the film was shot at 4000 frames per minute). Catch the premier at the AV Festival in Newcastle at 6.30pm on 11 March.

And finally, Caroline Horton will test run her new play Mess, which addresses the harrows of anorexia, as part of the Bite Size Festival at Warwick Arts Centre on 10 March.

Many thanks to our Senior Public Engagement Advisor Tom Ziessen and Arts Advisor Meroë Candy for the information.

Dylan Williams

'The Treasures of Henry Wellcome' window installation

Beaded turtles, a mechanical vibrator, a shrunken head: it would be difficult to find a more eclectic selection of items than those currently occupying the windows of 215 Euston Road. Some charming, others challenging, the 75 objects captured in photographs taken by Thom Atkinson represent only a minute fraction of the remarkable collection acquired by Henry Wellcome.

Many of the objects have been hidden away for decades in vast archives at Blythe House in Olympia or the holdings of the Wellcome Library, while others will be familiar sights for visitors to the Medicine Man gallery at Wellcome Collection.

The photographs, which were originally commissioned by the Financial Times Weekend Magazine for a feature marking the 75^th anniversary of the Wellcome Trust, have been used to create a startling window installation celebrating Henry Wellcome’s life and legacy. I spoke to the installation’s designer, Shaz Madani, to find out more.

Can you tell us about the design process behind the installation?

Thom’s photos are absolutely beautiful and the objects themselves are amazing, which made my job a lot easier than it would be normally!

The windows are on a busy road, so most of the people who pass by them are walking really quickly, going to or from work or the hospital. The installation had to be something that was instant and grabbed people’s attention. It needed a ‘wow’ factor.

We really wanted to create something visually dynamic. The photographs are different sizes, which creates an interesting fluidity. It draws your eye across, up and down, and it tells a kind of story. I think that Henry Wellcome’s collection is quite poetic and it’s not linear either. He wanted to tell a story and to create a sense of discovery, a journey through different layers of history.

The different photograph sizes also reflect the individuality of the objects themselves. They all have unique stories and something different to say.

Scale was really important.  Having smaller objects at the front and larger ones at the back was a really good way of getting around the fact that we’re opposite a massive road. People walking past can see the smaller images and people in cars or buses are able to see the larger ones. The largest photographs are also a little nod to the mammoth scale of Wellcome Collection and how much of it still hasn’t been unpacked.

Were there other themes that you wanted to draw out?

I found some really wonderful photographs of Henry Wellcome’s original museum. It was packed with pictures, photographs and cases of these lovely objects all behind glass. There was an idea of ‘preserving’ that I wanted to carry over into the window installation.

What was the most challenging part?

The biggest challenge was probably dealing with photographs as 2D objects in a 3D space [the window]. If you see these objects in the gallery then you see them in 3D. You get to walk around them and see them from different angles and really feel connected with them. I wanted to inject depth and energy into them, but at the same time stay true to the fact that they are photographs and not try to pretend that they aren’t.

Using wooden frames allowed us to display them in a traditional sense, but with a little bit of a twist. They also echo back to the materials [wood and glass] used to display the objects in the Medicine Man gallery. It’s a nice way to tie the window display in with the gallery. If people do go inside to visit Wellcome Collection, there’ll be a connection.

What was the best part of the process?

When we turned the lights on and saw it all come together – that was really fun! Also seeing people’s reactions while we were putting the installation up. They were coming up to the window and asking what was going on. They were really interested and baffled about what these objects were, which was really interesting.

What are you working on at the moment?

I’m actually more traditionally a print designer. I don’t often work on installations, but this has been a really interesting experience and something that I would definitely like to do more of.

I’m currently setting up my own independent practice and working across branding, publishing and magazines.

‘The Treasures of Henry Wellcome’ runs at the Wellcome Trust, 215 Euston Road, NW1 2BE, from 9^th March to 20^th May.

Image credit: Wellcome Images

Matt Parker. Credit: Steve Ullathorne.

There has been a groundswell of geeky comedy over the last few years. From the Uncaged Monkeys tour, which sold over 35 000 tickets, to the permanently sold-out Festival of the Spoken Nerd monthly comedy night, it seems that huge numbers of people are demanding intelligent entertainment and cerebral comedy.

No one is happier about this than the comedians themselves. A disproportionate number of comedians are closet nerds who spend their working lives talking to comedy clubs full of drunken stag parties who just want crude jokes and casual racism. The new nerdy comedy scene is providing an outlet for comedians to talk about subjects that they genuinely find interesting.

I recently saw the ex-accountant comedian Tom Goodliffe delighting in his routine about double-entry book keeping, with a willing audience enjoying every moment of it. It was hard to tell who was having more fun.

While this is all good for those science fans that enjoy comedy, the question remains: why are so many comedians nerdy in the first place? Surely the industry should be overrun with performance artists, and booking the panel for ‘QI’ should be a difficult task? But it’s not. The geeks had already taken over comedy long before there was a demand for them.

This is not limited to stand-up comedians. ‘The Simpsons’, arguably the most successful comedy TV show in the world, is written by people with a science background. Several of the writers completed maths degrees before going into writing. One of the co-executive producers, David X Cohen, has a degree in physics and an MSc in computer science.

It seems that the skill set for writing comedy is not all that dissimilar to what you learn studying maths, science and other technical subjects. Comedy writing is like engineering a finely honed mechanism. Any joke that is not working at full efficiency needs to be refined, re-ordered or removed.

When writing a comedy routine you need to be able to think logically, draw upon a toolkit of strategies and solve a complex network of ideas – all skills that you learn through maths. If you watch a stand-up comedian performing, they are mentally moving around a flowchart of material while still responding and adapting to the audience. This is no trivial mental feat.

Of course, this evidence is anecdotal and I’m careful to not jump to causal-link conclusions. But it is safe to say that comedy and nerdiness seem to be strongly correlated, which bodes well for audiences that like to have both halves of their brains entertained at the same time.

Matt Parker

This feature also appears in issue 70 of ‘Wellcome News’.

Matt Parker is based at Queen Mary, University of London. He is 1⁄3 of Festival of the Spoken Nerd and 1⁄2 of the maths show ‘Your Days Are Numbered: the Maths of Death‘.

Screen grabs of Nick Rothwell’s Voronoi cell systems with tumours growing amidst the organisms and causing systemic collapse. The system is based on venous network geometries supplied by Simon Walker-Samuel, senior research associate at the Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging at UCH.

Guy Noble invites you to a discussion of ideas, collaborations and interactions with patients, carers, researchers, clinicians that contributed to a new installation in the UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre.

University College London Hospitals believe that the provision of the Arts within a hospital environment is integral to patient wellbeing and to providing a high quality, modern patient-centred NHS and this is certainly the case for the newly built UCH Macmillan Cancer Centre.

From an artistic point of view the Cancer Centre provided me as Curator with an ideal opportunity to not only commission top quality art work which reflected the kind of first class care patients received there but also a chance to work with artists, patients, carers and staff to enable them to have ownership of the Centre and to explore what it meant for them to be in and a part of the cancer environment.

For many, hospital environments are alien and dehumanising places, so it is vital that the environment and in particular the art within it does not accentuate this feeling of alienation. We therefore endeavoured to offer patients, carers and staff with the opportunity to contribute directly to a number of the art commission within the Centre.

One such commission, Anarchy in the Organism, by Simeon Nelson, took the form of an 18 month residency partly funded by the Wellcome Trust and aiming to engage patients, visitors, staff and the general public with the science of cancer and its social, cultural and ethical impact. Certainly a challenging undertaking given the environment and Nelson worked closely with researchers, patients and staff interviewing them on personal, emotional, social, cultural and scientific aspects of cancer.

As an artist who works with ideas from complexity theory, emergence, and the philosophy of science, Nelson is fascinated with the biology of the human body, how it assembles itself into a complex organism and in how we maintain a sense of self within the growing and ageing process. Nelson also worked closely with Simon Walker-Samuel, Senior Research Associate, UCL Centre for Advanced Biomedical Imaging to generate computer code to simulate cancer life and death. Combining this, the input from patients and a soundscape by composer Rob Godman, Nelson created a digital artwork depicting organisms in different states of growth, mutation and decay as a normal aspect of being alive.

We are keen to engage as many people as possible with this commission and the science of cancer, and so have organised a symposium on 15 June, funded by the Wellcome Trust. The symposium will be a discussion of ideas, collaborations and interactions with patients, carers, researchers, clinicians. The symposium is also part of the London Creativity and Wellbeing Week, which aims to celebrate creativity in health.

To find out more and register for the symposium, visit the website.

Read more about the project and the research that went into it on the Anarchy in the Organism blog.

Guy Noble, Arts Curator UCLH ARTS

What do artists and scientists think of as ‘beautiful’ and do their outlooks differ? Dr Marjet Elemans and colleagues find out.

Although discoveries shape the way we live, the creative process and cutting edge scientific data underlying this progress are rarely presented to the public. Of course, one could argue, it is the end-result that counts so why share the raw scientific data?

At Imperial College London, three postdoctoral researchers have a short and simple answer: beauty. With the increased use of high-resolution microscopy scientists have started producing stunning images of cells, bones or even whole organisms. Impressed by the aesthetics of their microscopic images, these researchers began to wonder if their scientific images could actually be considered art.

To try to answer this question a project emerged in which artists were invited to produce artistic representations of postdoctoral research performed at Imperial College. The project, called Beautiful Science, began with a dialogue between artists and scientists, not only to explain the scientific work we wanted translated into art, but also to understand the similarities and differences in creative thought in the arts and the sciences. Are we really that different? Do we live up to the stereotypes of emotion driven creators versus rational fact-finders? What can we learn from each other?

Not surprisingly, the project quickly taught that there are many similarities; in approach, creativity and even techniques. Jo Bradford and Alice Brown concluded that, even though Alice uses cutting-edge microscopes and cameras while Jo creates her art with antiquated camera-less photographic techniques, they found some remarkable similarities between processes they both used and the hours of experimentation they both put in to produce a single coloured picture.

But, equally unsurprising, there’s a lot we can learn from each other. As Martin Spitaler, who runs the film and light microscopy facility within Imperial College, found:

“Artists often try to understand what makes us feel happy, what makes us feel “this is beautiful”. That’s something very helpful for scientists too – just step back… and enjoy the beauty of it”.

A scientific pitfall is to get more and more specialised and gradually get lost in details. Artists can catch the essence of faces or objects with just a few simple lines.

As one of the organisers of Beautiful Science I am impressed by the dedication of the participants of the project. I’ve never worked with a group that is so enthusiastic and inquisitive. The artists spend a lot of time and energy to understand the work carried out by their scientific counterparts and the scientists in turn got involved in the artistic process and made a huge effort to explain and simplify their often specialised research. If this group of young artists and scientists is representative for the current and coming generation of professionals, science communication is heading for a great future.

The Beautiful Science project has resulted in an exhibition where pure scientific images are juxtaposed with the artworks they inspired. Do the scientific images stand as works of art when presented in the same context as their purely artistic counterparts? Come and judge for yourself at the Brick Lane Gallery ANNEXE (26 June – 2 July 2012).

Marjet Elemans

Dr Marjet Elemans is an immunologist at Imperial College London and one of the organisers of Beautiful Science.

Beautiful Science is supported by a Wellcome Trust People Award and runs at the Brick Lane Gallery ANNEXE until 2 July 2012.

A related discussion event takes place at Imperial College London tonight (18 June 2012). See beautifulscience.info for more details.

Image credit: Beautiful Science

James Peto. Credit: Wellcome Images

In the run up to A-level and GCSE results days, we’re publishing a series of Q&A case studies from our Big Picture issue on Careers with Biology. 

James Peto is an exhibition curator at the London-based Wellcome Collection, a museum, art space, library and more. He discusses his career history and explains what it’s like working to develop science exhibitions having never had a single biology lesson.

Describe your job in one sentence.
I’m an exhibition curator – part of the team that puts together exhibitions here.

What did you study at school?
I did French, German and English A levels, then I went to Cambridge University to study French and German. I was increasingly interested in art, so I changed course halfway through and did my degree in the history of art.

What did you do once you left university?
I got a job at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), selling tickets at the box office for two years. Then, because I’d learnt to touch-type, I got a job in the ICA gallery as a secretary. After that, I managed to get on a year-long course in curating contemporary art run by the Whitney Museum in New York.

When I came back, I worked in the Castle Museum in Nottingham and then on Tyneside, commissioning artists to make works in public spaces – outdoors and indoors around the city and in places that were very different from the clean white box of the art gallery. I’ve always been interested in how artists can make a difference in the real world, not just in the art world. The artists we worked with wanted to encourage people to stop and think about their environment, the way they interact with it, and the way they live.

Then I worked as a curator at the Whitechapel Art Gallery for four years and moved to the Design Museum, where I became head of exhibitions. That was a shift towards the practical application of art. Design can be about applying practical and engineering skills, as well as aesthetic criteria, to make things that work well for people.

I applied to the Wellcome Trust for funding for some projects I worked on there. I was very interested in how the Trust was trying to break down the boundaries between science and art and encouraging people to see science as part of everyday life – something that affects culture and is affected by culture, not just something done by clever people in white coats hidden away in laboratories. When I heard they were planning Wellcome Collection, it related closely to my interest in art that is as close as possible to real life, so I was delighted to get a job here.

What would a typical day for you entail?
Each day is different. A lot depends on which stage of an exhibition we’re at. There’s a research stage, which involves a lot of thinking about what it is that we’re trying to say in the exhibition, what subjects to cover, and what objects and artworks to include. This is followed by a period of negotiating loans from other museums and collections. Then there’s a design stage. How will each individual object be displayed, how will it relate to the next exhibit? How does the whole exhibition hang together? What’s the overall feel and shape?

What are the most challenging and satisfying things about your job?
One of the biggest challenges is what kind of and how much interpretative text to put in an exhibition. Get the balance right between giving people enough information but not bombarding them with too much. It’s important that they can find their own connections. Often, it is more interesting to ask questions than to give answers – getting people to explore areas of uncertainty in science and in life: the things that are still unanswered or that are disputed. I think paradoxically that can be where people learn more, by trying to engage with the things that aren’t known, rather than simply learning what they’re told.

The most satisfying thing is when visitor surveys tell us people are spending a lot of time in an exhibition – or even coming back to see it again. That suggests their curiosity has been stirred, and they’re finding something fresh every time.

How do you balance a career and a family life?
That’s one of the biggest challenges. The hours are quite long, but the work can be very satisfying. And also you need to spend time looking at other exhibitions. It’s important to learn from what other people do.

How do you find it working in a science-related area without any formal science education?
It means I have a lot to learn with each exhibition we put on. Depending on the subject of the exhibition, we might need a lot of expert advice from others. There’s a great deal of consultation and collaboration involved, but I enjoy that process.

Qualifications

• A levels: French, German, English (1976)
• BA in art history (1980)
• Independent Studies Programme, Whitney Museum, New York (1987)

Career history

• Working on a farm in Germany in the summer holidays (1976-80)
• Odd jobs – a security guard and painter/decorator (1980-82)
• Ticket seller, ICA box office (1982-84)
• Assistant/secretary, ICA Visual Arts Dept (1984-86)
• Assistant curator, Nottingham Castle Museum (1988-89)
• Exhibition and project manager, Tyne and Wear Museums (1989-93)
• Exhibitions curator, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1993-98)
• Curator, then head of exhibitions, Design Museum (1999-2005)
• Curator, then senior curator, Wellcome Collection (2005-)

Top tip

Go to as many exhibitions as possible, follow your interests. Do lots of looking, reading and thinking. Looking especially – ask yourself, ‘What is it that can make a subject visually exciting and intriguing?’ Try lots of comparing and contrasting. That’s where your enthusiasm and curiosity develop – and they’re integral to the job.

This article was originally part of the online content for ‘Big Picture: Careers from biology’. Read more profiles and find out more about careers with biology on the website. 

An aerial silk dancer in the performance inspired by ENCODE

Attending a press conference at the Science Museum, the journalists, TV cameras and panel of academics were to be expected. But I was not expecting to witness a photoshoot involving three scientists in suits posing with three dancers in sequined leotards following an aerial “DNA dance” performed on silk sheets hung from the ceiling.

It was all inspired by research in the ENCODE project, which last night published 30 papers summarising the work to date. The project has revealed that sections of the human genome previously thought to be “junk DNA” in fact have a wide range of functions.

In particular, 4 million DNA ‘switches’ have been found that control whether genes are ‘on’ or ‘off’. The distance in the genome sequence between the switches and the genes they control is often quite large but the DNA loops back on itself, which enables the switch to work. In an attempt to engage a broader audience with such a complex topic, the silk dance performance has been choreographed to simulate this looping: hence the sequined leotards.

To me, the dance itself was impressive enough but for the very observant there was also some science embedded in the choreography. Ewan Birney, Associate Director of EMBL-European Bioinformatics Institute and one of 26 principal investigators in ENCODE, informed us that “the silk represents the DNA and the dancers are proteins”. As DNA only twists clockwise and the DNA code reads up one side and down the other, the silk also only twisted clockwise around the dancers. The performance even involved a section representing ‘stuttering transcription’, a process where a protein reads a section of DNA, stops, goes back to the beginning, then reads the whole gene.

The ‘Switch to a Different You?’ display

At the same time as the scientific publications were announced, the Science Museum unveiled a new case in its ‘Who Am I?’ gallery, named ‘Switch to a Different You?’ It showcases some of the concepts in the ENCODE project, including genetic switches.

The temporary case has been developed in just two months by the gallery’s curators, working closely with ENCODE researchers. It explains how slight differences in environment can produce different characteristics, even when the DNA sequence is the same. For example, visitors can see two high resolution images of identical twins’ irises. Despite having inherited the same DNA, their eyes have slight differences because they developed in a different environment. Even in individual people, there are differences between our left eye and our right eye because of minor environmental factors changing the switches that determine how our DNA is decoded.

The exhibit will be on display until the 5 December as part of the Science Museum’s rotating showcase of the latest scientific concepts. Ewan Birney hopes that the silk dance performance and the exhibition will help engage people with the work of ENCODE.

If you’re able to go to the Science Museum today at 1.30pm, you too will be able to watch the “DNA dance” live in the ‘Who Am I?’ gallery. It is up to you to find the stuttering transcription hidden in the performance, though!

Here’s the result of that photoshoot….

Image credit: Leo Johnson (Switch to a Different You? / Silk dancers and scientists)

Ever played with plasticene as a child? If your answer is yes, then maybe you could help us.

Last year, we started a new tradition – to make festive trees adorned with decorations inspired by science rather than the usual baubles. We want to make a new tree for 2012. Back by popular demand, we’re sending out more packs of colourful modelling materials and threads so you can fashion your very own decorations to hang on your tree at home.

This year our theme is a bit different. We want to find out what science has inspired you over the past 12 months. Ideas may strike from your research, to what you’ve read in books or science stories in the media over the past year.

We have 40 packs available on a first-come-first serve basis. Contact Rachel Mason on r.mason@wellcome.ac.uk to get yours. Kits allow you to make around five decorations.

We’ll again be running our Tree of Life competition to find the most visually striking and imaginative entries. All you have to do is submit a photo of your work to our pool of science-based decorations on Flickr. And if you see/make any other sciencey decorations not involving our packs, feel free to add those too (though those won’t be eligible for the competition of course).

Here’s a little demo video to help get you started.

If you’re stuck, have a look at our blog archive (or indeed elsewhere on the web) for stories or images. We’re thinking of making a decorative frog egg to celebrate Nobel Prize winner Sir John Gurdon, or maybe a mitochondrion carrying a rare genetic disease.

Your decoration won’t be alone either. The Francis Crick Institute are working with hundreds of schoolchildren to make and display their decorations on special ‘Trees of Life’ in London’s Euston Station from Wednesday. These will also be on our Flickr pool, or if you’re in the area why not pop by and see them for yourself?

Get your kit by emailing r.mason@wellcome.ac.uk

Share pictures of your creations, or any other fun science decorations, on our Flickr pool.

This project is in collaboration with Dr Lizzie Burns, a science-based artist and visiting academic in the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics in the University of Oxford.  Visit www.sciencetolife.org for more information about her artwork and workshops.

Shock Head Soul – the DVD is released this month

The country is being swept by snow, sleigh bells and seasonal promotions. The only thing missing from the festive frivolities is a sprinkling of science, so here’s a round-up of some science and medical-themed events, funded through our public engagement awards, that will keep you entertained, and your mind active, in the months ahead.

Last chance to see…

This month is your last chance to see the work of the Turner Prize 2012 finalists exhibited at the Tate Britain. One of the finalists is artist and film-maker Luke Fowler, whose film ‘All Divided Selves’ was made with the support of a Wellcome Trust Broadcast Development Award. The film is based on the RD Laing archive footage at the University of Glasgow, which is also supported by the Trust through a Research Resources grant. The Telegraph review of the exhibition describes Fowler as ‘a superb film-maker with a subtle mind and a lot to say’, so do get along to the Tate Britain and see the film for yourself. The exhibition closes on 6 January.

Also in town for a limited time only is Going Dark, the sell-out show from pioneering group Sound&Fury. Having toured the UK, selling out its three week run at the Young Vic’s Clare Theatre, the show now returns by popular demand to the Young Vic’s larger space, the Maria, for a three week run from 4 to 22 December. Sound&Fury use their innovative theatre vocabulary of immersive surround sound design, total darkness and imaginative lighting to reawaken our wonder at the cosmos and reveal how one man’s vision becomes illuminated by darkness.

Be the first to know…

Meanwhile, some exciting new projects are just getting underway. “When It Takes More Than Two” is a series of public debates organised by the Progress Educational Trust. The debates will seek to clarify public and professional understanding of donor conception by approaching the topic from one of three different perspectives: that of the donors, the recipients, and those born of the process.

The first debate will be held at University College London on the evening of Wednesday 12 December. Entitled ‘Giving: The Gamete Donor Perspective’, it will focus on the perspective of the sperm or egg donor. The event is free to attend, but advance booking is required. For more information visit http://www.progress.org.uk/giving.

Ongoing exhibitions…

If you’re looking for an unusual exhibition to explore this weekend, then the Museum of London’s Doctors, Dissection and Resurrection Men, which will run until April 2013, is a fascinating insight into the grisly world of dissection and the trade in dead bodies in the early 19th century. The exhibition brings together human and animal remains, exquisite anatomical models and drawings, documents and original artefacts. Keep an eye out for the Wellcome Trust sponsored-film installation which brings contemporary voices to the exhibition themes.

In the North West, there are two great exhibitions, ‘The Wasted Works’ and ‘Re-framing Disability’, running in Manchester and Leeds respectively, both until 27 January.

The Wasted Works, by Gina Czarnecki at the Museum of Science and Industry, is a collection of artworks exploring the life-giving potential of ‘discarded’ body parts. This exhibition was part of Manchester Science Festival and launched during the Manchester Weekender. ‘PALACES’, one of the installations in ‘The Wasted Works’, is a unique arts-science project that aims to create a magical sculpture using thousands of baby teeth donated by the public. This will grow over time like a coral reef, to form a fantastical stalagmite-like structure of crystal resin, encrusted in barnacle formations using baby teeth donated by children in the UK and around the world.  The exhibition is suitable for all ages, subject to parent’s/guardian’s discretion.

‘Re-framing disability: portraits from the Royal College of Physicians’ at the Thackray Museum in Leeds brings together historical and contemporary perspectives on disability. The exhibition uncovers the hidden histories behind the portraits of disabled people from the 17th to the 19th century, many of whom earned a living exhibiting themselves to the public, and looks at their impact today through contemporary responses from 27 disabled participants from across the UK.

Not going out…

And if the cold days and early nights are making you reluctant to leave the house, you can enjoy these science and medicine documentaries from the comfort of your sofa.

Two historical films first, documenting the equally extraordinary, but starkly different, lives of two early twentieth century men. Both combine the men’s own words with imagined re-constructions to give a unique account of their experiences.

To mark the centenary of his ill-fated final expedition, the ITV documentary Words of Captain Scott used readings of the diaries and letters of Captain Scott, his companions, and those of his Norwegian rival Roald Amundsen – to tell the story of their epic South Pole expeditions. If you missed it, you can now watch it on-line here.

Simon Pummell’s film Shock Head Soul will be released on DVD in the UK on 10 December, after a successful run in the Netherlands. The film interweaves documentary interviews, fictional re-construction and CGI animation to portray the story of Daniel Paul Schreber, a successful lawyer who, in 1903, was confined to an asylum for nine years and documented his experiences in his now celebrated autobiography of madness, ‘Memoirs of My Nervous Illness’. The film’s mix of forms creates both a love story and a cinematic essay that explores the borderline between religious vision and deluded fanaticism, and explores the intimate link between family secrets, psychiatric diagnosis, and the limits to our contemporary understanding of mental illness.

The latest in the series of Body Pods podcasts, from Fuel Theatre, is now available to download from the Guardian and Time Out websites. Body Pods is a 12 month series of podcasts which brings together artists and scientists to explore different parts of the body. The most recent, The Skin, is by multimedia artist and performer Stacy Makishi and dermatologist Michael Klaber.

Another unique insight into the human body and its workings, the BBC2 documentary ‘Secret Universe: The Hidden Life of the Cell’ on 21 October followed the story of a viral infection from the point of view of the infected cell, revealing the machinery of the human cell and how it defends against such an attack. The associated interactive Secret Universe website has now launched.  It contains further information about the cellular components featured in the film and also features clips from the film narrated by David Tennant. The film and the website were supported by a Broadcast grant from the Trust.

Over the course of four months, Barry Gibb visited our major overseas programmes in Africa and Asia to make a film about Wellcome Collection’s Art and Global Health project. In the first of his journal entries from the trip, Barry discusses how the project came about and how a filmmaker plans a shoot spanning 6 countries.

In the latter half of 2012, I was asked to take part in something extraordinary.

Art in Global Health sees six sets of artists selected to take up residency in each of the Trust’s major research centres across the world. Danielle Olsen, curator of this ambitious venture, was looking for ways to somehow record their progress, their artistic process as they immersed themselves in the research centres, the science and scientists.

We discussed various possibilities, several of which she had already initiated, such as blogging, audio or video diaries. Then she mentioned the possibility of making a film, a globe-trotting visual delight, filled with art, science and exotic locations – a fantastic way to reveal the artists, the scope of what they were trying to achieve and the cultural nuances of each location. What I wasn’t quite prepared for was the moment Danielle casually asked, ‘So, will you do it?’. How could I refuse?

Of course, it’s never that simple. Working in any large organisation, on a project of this scale, you quickly discover there are layers of protocol and bureaucracy. This was, potentially, a massive additional undertaking alongside my usual work, involving visiting six different countries and six different institutions around the world: Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, Vietnam, Thailand and Germany. I’d be out of the office for weeks.

Thankfully, a rather enthusiastic consensus was reached: yes. I’d go out to each country to interview and film each of the artists, to try and capture a sense of their emergent process and ongoing works. Additionally, we agreed it would be a fantastic opportunity to try and capture as much of the science going on out in each research centre as possible – to work with the in-house communications and public engagement teams to plan a series of filming opportunities and interviews with the scientists as well as the artists. Adding more to the mix, we also decided that each scientist, once interviewed about their own work, would then be asked a series of questions about the artistic residency too. Naturally, filled with a naive enthusiasm, I had no idea yet how exhausting this would be.

Once this fairly portly framework was agreed, Danielle and myself had to act fast. We had around a month to organise the trips, a couple to actually do the filming, then get back and edit it all together. All this, of course, amidst my usual flurry of film work.

My feeling was that the best approach would be to take on two research centres at a time, spending four days in each – two days to focus on the artists and two days to focus on the scientists and their work. Add in flights and travel and the first 11-day trip started to take shape, in no small part thanks to the fantastic assistance of our Travel Coordinator, Rod Richardson. Visas, flights, hotels, filming permissions, emergency contacts – Rod made sure I could get where I was going, safely, have a place to stay and not get arrested for producing a camera whilst there.

The first trip was to the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme in Kenya and the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme. The last thing I wanted was for the scientists to think, ‘the Wellcome Trust is sending someone to film you – perform!’. Instead, my hope was to make the trips feel collaborative from beginning to end – that we’d all benefit. The best way to achieve this, it seemed, was to work as closely as possible with the Centre Directors themselves and their own, existing, engagement teams. There followed weeks of learning new names and trying to tease out the various interrelationships of all concerned. Treading lightly.

Fully vaccinated, the first trip was fast approaching, but before delving into the travel lounges, flights, cheeky monkeys, countless motorbikes, spicy foods and shanty towns, I needed a bag. The first thing I did was check Philip Bloom’s blog. A guru amongst indie filmmakers – if ever there was a man who would know about taking filming equipment on planes, it would be him. Sure enough, Mr Bloom recommended the ThinkTank Airport International V2.0. A bag with a ‘version number’ has to be a good bag.

The Airport International V2.0

The case had to be able to take everything, leaving me wanting for nothing. Once I was out of the office  there would be no way to access any help, so maximum self-sufficiency was paramount. For this first trip, I’d calculated that if I wanted to be able to film, during each 10-11 day trip, up to around 20 hours max (10 hours per country, 5 hours for ‘science’ and 5 hours for ‘art’), I’d need around 250Gb of memory cards. Into the bag went:

• 1 x Sony EX1 video camera
• 1 x Canon 550D DSLR for discrete reportage shots
• 2 x chargers and 2 batteries for both cameras
• 2 x Sennheiser radio mics with spare batteries
• 1 x Rode shotgun mic (plus 2 x XLR cables, just in case one got lost)
• 1 x pair of headphones
• 3 x SxS memory cards (expensive!)
• 2 x ‘SD card to EX1 SxS’ slot adapters
• 12 x 16Gb SD cards (far less expensive)
• 1 x lens cloth
• 1 x lens pen
• 1 x blower brush

By the time I actually got to the airport it was a bit of a relief to finally get going after all the pre-planning shenanigans, but also more than a little daunting. I was on my own. Bye-bye comfort zone, hello Kenya.

Find out more about the Art and Global Health project.

Updated 4/4/2013: Corrected spelling and job title for Danielle Olsen.

A photograph by Miriam and James, exploring the juxtaposition of science and nature.

Over the course of four months, Barry J Gibb visited our major overseas programmes in Africa and Asia to make a film about the Art in Global Health project. In the second of his journal entries Barry arrives in Kenya.

Within minutes of arriving at Nairobi airport, en route to Mombasa, I was fleeced by two apparently well-meaning gentlemen. On arrival at the diminutive airport, I found myself needing to change planes quickly and, in the absence of clear signage, clearly looked like a confused and wandering target. This was my first important lesson when travelling alone – never look confused, never look lost. As I wandered aimlessly around, I was approached with the offer of help to carry my bags. Thinking this gentleman was staff (bright yellow jacket), I gratefully received his assistance. Thirty feet later, we had ‘arrived’, as had his friend who began badgering me for cash. Initially reluctant, their persistence veered towards light threats. From that moment on, no one carried my bags again.

Mombasa airport was an entirely different experience. Collecting my bags at this tiny airport, a charming woman asked if I worked for the Wellcome Trust. This was how I met Vicky Marsh, wife of Kevin Marsh, the Director of the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme. Together, we shared a jeep ride for the hour’s journey to Kilifi, home of KEMRI, and my home for the next few days. Animals walked alongside the road, just as much as the people. And there were so many people, just walking. The drive passed quickly as Vicky explained how she and Kevin came to Kilifi, as young scientists, how the place had transformed from a quiet seaside village to a burgeoning town and holiday resort, the tremendous impact the building of a simple bridge had had for locals and the way its culture had embraced them. And, of course, the impact of building a state of the art research centre – the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) – with around 700 employees right in the middle of it all.

I checked-in at the Mnarani Club, a beautiful resort nestling by the ocean, and headed off to KEMRI to meet my long-time email colleague Juliette Mutheau, then KEMRI’s Science Communication Officer. She introduced me to KEMRI’s designated artists-in-residence for the Art in Global Health project, Miriam Syowia Kyambi and James Muriuki. A fantastic team using all manner of media and performance to communicate their ideas, I immediately knew we would get on. We went to their cottage by the ocean; my mind fizzing with filming opportunities. Travelling to the cottage, I used my DSLR camera to shoot them in their tiny jeep during a rather turbulent drive on rocky roads. Once there, I brought out the heavy artillery, my EX1 camera, filming as much as I could. This tends to be my filming style – I know pretty much what I’m after but, in any given situation in which reality is unfolding before the lens, I’ll capture as much as I can. One never knows what might be useful and, when it comes to capturing moments, there are no second chances.

At their cottage, they took me out to see something that was ‘currently inspiring them’. Fifty metres from their front door, behind a wall of vegetation, was the ocean crashing against a series of cliffs, in all its deep blue, tempestuous glory. ‘Look’ they said, ‘listen…’.

Back in the cottage I filmed them discussing their process, their work. Listening to Miriam and James talk was remarkable; the depth of their thinking, reasoning, the scope of their questions, insights and ideas. This was a side to art I’d never heard: ‘good’ art is the product of intense intellectual interrogation, a process resulting in a thing, a piece of art, potentially provoking a viewer down a thought path of their own. Part of their thinking was to explore the boundaries between culture and science in Kilifi through a series of photographs. We went to a local food market with a handful of latex laboratory gloves. Less than 24 hours earlier I’d been in leafy North London; now I was standing in the middle of a busy, dusty street in Kilifi as Miriam explained to a bewildered but tolerant vendor why they needed private access to the market for half an hour to throw gloves. This sounds a little unusual, but their artistic aim was very clear: by photographing lab equipment in environments you never usually see it in, they create images in which worlds and beliefs collide, provoking a viewer to think and question their views of science.

Inside the market, James set up his camera while Miriam looked for good locations to launch some latex. This was art in action, just as much as the photographs that followed. The market was surrounded by curious onlookers, watching these two, possibly wildly eccentric, artists work. Over and over again, Miriam threw the gloves across the market as James tried to capture the perfect spread of airborne labware across tomatoes, carrots, potatoes… Frozen in time, the gloves adopt a life of their own, in a space that should be alien to them.

Back at the Mnarani, I finally met and chatted with Kevin Marsh, agreeing that we should cover some of the more scientific aspects of the trip. That the man at the head of the KEMRI-Wellcome Programme wanted to be so involved was fantastic, an invaluable endorsement of the value of film to the organisation. This did wonders for my confidence in the trip. Over the next couple of days, I filmed the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust’s scientists at work, interviewed its people and gawped at the hugely curious monkeys that seemed to appear on every external stairway in sight.

Patterns began to emerge about how science works in Kilifi. Teams of people from Kilifi regularly leave the centre, heading out into the various patchworks of communities to liaise with their members, literally building bridges between the population and the science all around them, to help explain how, for example, giving a single sample of blood can advance science and health.

Feeding into this battle of understanding is a government, I was informed by locals, that presently undervalues science. With little support within the education climate and beyond, there’s only minor encouragement to become a scientist and little hope of a supported career, should you become one. Growing up in such a climate, it’s hardly surprising the general level of scientific enthusiasm is impoverished.

To see the real value of science, one need only visit the hospital next door to KEMRI. In one area, the Wellcome Trust’s logo sits proud yet crudely painted onto the faded blue wall of one of the hospital’s ageing buildings. And while science is broadly about stretching our understanding of life and our place within the Universe, arguably it’s greatest, most immediate impacts can be seen in contexts like this, where advances result in tangible benefits to health. Blue-sky research will always be of great importance but the science in Kilifi has an urgency about it, a very real life-saving focus. In one of the most affecting experiences of the entire trip, I toured the busy hospital, including a children’s ward, meeting toddlers suffering from malaria. There, the importance of KEMRI and what it’s trying to achieve powerfully hit home.

Another experience I was completely unprepared for was an impromptu conversation with one of the cleaning staff at the Mnarani. Hovering by the door, it was clear he wanted to say something. “Do you believe in witchcraft where you come from?,” he asked. This was not what I’d been expecting but our chat revealed a whole other cultural dimension to Kenya that had blindsided me. In addition to Christianity and the Muslim religion, Kenya and many other parts of Africa have a powerful belief in magic. This gentleman was very curious about how we, in the UK, achieve success without fear of some form of magical retaliation (apparently, my room had strong magic, which I chose to believe was a good thing). This belief is not restricted to cleaners: senior researchers at KEMRI spoke of professors who have deeply superstitious beliefs. This innocent conversation was a powerful reminder that the culture underpinning a country has as much, if not more, impact on its scientific progress as its education system.

Hear more of Barry’s audio diaries from Kenya:

Barry Gibb

Barry Gibb is a Multimedia Producer at the Wellcome Trust.

Read Barry’s first post on his tour.

Find out more about Art in Global Health on the Wellcome Collection website. Find out more about the KEMRI-Wellcome Trust Research Programme.

You Are What You Ate at Pontefract Castle

Our regular scamper through upcoming science and medicine themed events funded through the Wellcome Trust’s public engagement awards.

First up, the ‘Wonder: art and science on the brain’ season culminates in a spectacular street fair and events offering at the Barbican in London over the next week. With talks, films, body illusions, knitting, comics, surgery, walking tours, 19^th century costumes, and an evening with Ruby Wax, there’s lots on offer. See the full schedule on the Barbican website. It’s all coinciding with the British Neuroscience Association’s Festival of Neuroscience – one of the biggest neuroscience conferences in the scientific calendar, which this year takes place also at the Barbican. The conference brings together hundreds of the world’s top brain researchers. Our sister blog ThInk will have comprehensive coverage of the conference and Wonder over the coming week from a team of reporters, including Guardian science blogger Mo Costandi. You can also follow the conversations on Twitter via the hashtags #BNAneurofest and #wonderseason.

Matters of Life and Death Medical Talks at Arnos Vale cemetery continue in April exploring the life or death role of medicine through history. ‘Angel of Death – The story of Smallpox’ takes place on Thursday 4th April, 7:30-8:30pm in Bristol followed by ‘Antivaccinationist and Antivivisectionist: Dr Hadwen of Gloucester’ on Thursday 18th April also from 7:30pm-8:30pm.

The first event of The False Memory Archive’s tour will be an afternoon of talks at the Talbot Rice Gallery, Edinburgh on 6th April from 1-4pm. Professor Richard Wiseman, Dr Caroline Watt and Professor Sergio Della Sala will give a series of presentations looking at the distortion of memory and autobiographical stories. The archive is a collection of false and distorted memories submitted by members of the public – further details of the project and the full tour schedule at: http://falsememoryarchive.com. Book via: http://www.sciencefestival.co.uk/whats-on/categories/talk/the-false-memory-archive-a-discussion.

Tales from Babel – Musical Adventures in the Science of Hearing is a new performance and research project from The Clerks music group. The concert programme will demonstrate through both performance and audience interaction the challenges of hearing different texts at the same time, or “the cocktail party problem”. The pilot presentation takes place on 5th April at 4pm at West Road Concert Hall, Cambridge, followed by a presentation at the Barbican on 8th April at 10am. Further tour dates: http://www.talesfrombabel.co.uk/concerts.

All About Me is a brand new gallery now open at Eureka! the national children’s museum in Halifax, West Yorkshire. ‘All About Me’ is a 900m² exhibition aiming to harness the latest knowledge and techniques in playful learning to captivate, stimulate and challenge children, aged from 0 to 11, and their families in science, health and well-being. The new gallery will include multi-sensory hands-on exhibits to encourage young people to explore how the body works and imaginative spaces and activities will invite them to enjoy and understand the uniqueness of their own bodies.

Cartographies of Life & Death (CoLD) is an exhibition marking the bicentenary of John Snow. It will explore the significance of Snow’s work, the field of disease mapping and its implications for society today in terms of public health, based at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, Keppel Street, London, between 13 March – 17 April, Monday to Saturday, 10am – 5pm. A mobile website can be used to follow the map of the exhibition and Soho area with audio at significant locations. Supporting the CoLD, there are Weekly Returns including street performances and lectures all beginning at the Broad Street memorial pump on Broadwick Street, Soho. Full exhibition and event details at http://johnsnowbicentenary.lshtm.ac.uk/exhibition.

The Edinburgh International Science Festival (until 7 April) has adapted six of its life science workshops for an adult audience – creating centrepieces for Science Festival Lates. Three sets of busks (on bikes!) have also been created that will be performing throughout the streets of Edinburgh, as well as at a range of cultural festivals across Scotland throughout the year.

Maker Faire UK will take place at Newcastle’s Centre for Life on 27-28^th April. For the first year an area within the festival will be dedicated to the DIY Bio project consisting of a ‘pop up community lab’ in the exhibition space featuring the world’s most renowned biohackerspaces with their home-made lab equipment and current projects. Maker Faire is a show and tell festival—a family-friendly showcase of invention, creativity and resourcefulness, and a celebration of the Maker movement. It’s a place where people show what they are making, and share what they are learning.

Melanie Jackson’s The Urpflanze (Part 2) is showing at Flat Time House until 12th May (Thursday-Sunday 12-6pm). In a series of moving images and ceramic sculptures, the installation explores mutability and transformation. It is based on the concept of an imaginary primal plant that contains the potential for all possible future forms. The exhibition will be open late on Friday 26th April, with Melanie Jackson in conversation with Esther Leslie from 6.30-8.30pm.

The Pigeon Theatre is collaborating with Cognitive Neuroscientist Dr Colin Lever in a new theatre performance, The Smell of Envy. The show uses older actors and their memories and is part cookery demonstration, part science experiment, part neuroscience lecture and part smell laboratory. The Smell of Envy is on tour around the country, finishing on 17th May with a performance in our very building! See http://pigeontheatre.wordpress.com for more details and the full list of tour dates.

Still on

Food For All Seasons at Wakefield Museum is running until 28 September.  Part of the You Are What You Ate project it introduces the people of medieval Wakefield through the food they grew and ate each season of the year. In the Middle Ages, the lives of rich and poor were intertwined. Times were harsh in 14th century Yorkshire, with war, famine and animal disease making life challenging for its inhabitants. Yet for those in control of Sandal Castle, peasants continued to plough the fields and sow the seeds of the future. Further details about the exhibition, related events (talks, festival stalls and children’s activities), and YAWYA in general are available at: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/yawya/events/index.html.

PAIN LESS: the future of relief, an exhibition at the Science Museum runs until November 2013. It explores the future of pain relief and the different ways that pain management is being developed. Scientists now have new understanding of the link between the brain and the body and are investigating how this can help us to overcome pain in future.

Advanced notice

JULIUS, a multi-screen film produced by Elastic Theatre, will premiere at Spitalfields Music Festival from 7th-14th June before touring internationally. The film explores the nature of obsessional thoughts and the superstitious beliefs associated with them.

Jon Adams, an artist in residence at the Autism Research Centre, will be giving a performance and talk at the Arts Catalyst on 14th June. Jon’s work is a personal, artistic and scientific exploration of his own Asperger’s Syndrome.

Thanks to our Engaging Science colleagues Tom Ziessen, Meroe Candy, Jenny Paton and Helen Latchem for the info.

If you are inspired to go along to any of the activities listed here, leave a comment below and let us know what you thought.

Scientists in Malawi working with ‘locals’ around 30km from the nearest hospital

Over the course of four months, Barry J Gibb visited the Wellcome Trust’s major overseas programmes in Africa and Asia to make a film about the Art in Global Health project. In the third of his journal entries Barry arrives in Malawi.

Flying to Blantyre in Malawi was a rather ramshackle affair. The flight was in a diminutive 32-seater plane (I counted them). After jamming the camera bag under the seat in front of me, I tried to relax in the dated, rather worn looking contraption that was about to exceed 20,000 feet.

It was around this time that I was also beginning to get seriously edgy about the memory cards I was carrying. Backing up the video data wasn’t something I’d considered prior to leaving, which suddenly struck me as very, very silly. For the next trip, I’d ensure there was a portable drive, constantly backed up, in with my main luggage. For now, I’d have to simply accept that every day, hours of precious, carefully collected footage were precariously far from home.

Arriving at Chileka International Airport, the driver who had been arranged to pick me up was absent. Having learnt my lesson in Kenya, there then followed an Oscar-worthy performance as I did my utmost to look like a native, ignoring the numerous attempts to become my new best friend, taxi me around, carry my bags, etc. Fortunately, the driver showed up after several minutes and was so solidly built the other drivers parted like water.

The hotel was not what I was expecting. Having been away from home for a week, I was looking forward to the company of strangers, dinner in the midst of people, if only to soak up a little human contact. Instead, I discovered myself in a gated environment, with no dining area and no bar. And so, each night, dinner would be brought to my room by Frank, a warm, friendly member of staff, who would carefully lay the table, place the array of food he had made on the table and leave. The one time the hotel did indulge in communal dining was breakfast, an experience shared not just by the diners but by the hotel’s pet deer. This beautific creature would show up and just stare at me with its huge, gorgeous eyes as I chewed through toast.

Research, washing and Scottish roots

During my first visit to the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme, I met the Programme’s wonderful Public Engagement team: Tamara, Elvis and Bertha, the woman who would be my main point of contact and guide. They had formulated a great plan of whom to meet (by which they meant interview) and when. But first I had to meet my artist, Elson Kambalu.

Elson is a wondrously laid back individual, confident yet unimposing. It was clear he knew what he wanted out of my visit as much as I did and he orchestrated much of our time together which, as it turned out, was fantastic.

After a few light interviews on the hoof, including one with the Programme’s enthusiastic and generous Associate Director, Professor Moffat Nyirenda, I was escorted around the centre, camera in hand, to get a sense of how the place runs. I observed as entire teams, devoted to the statistical analysis of the scientific data being collected in the field, entered their precious numbers and personal information into computers. The question begged, where is the data coming from?

Some of it is coming from the hospital adjoining the research centre. As we wandered around the hospital grounds, the area was dotted with nurses having their lunch on the grass. The fusion of black skin, ultra white uniforms and luscious green grass made for a spectacular sight. This was heightened by the overwhelming quaintness of the place, a distinct 50s feel, revealing itself in their uniforms and hairstyles.

A little further on and we were confronted by bushes covered in clothing. This, it turns out, are how the hospital’s residents dry their clothes following a wash. It was as if nature had abandoned chlorophyll and started sprouting vividly coloured cotton finery.

As in Kenya, the hospital in Malawi had its fair share of maladies and suffering. Again, it was important to film with sensitivity; to capture these images without crossing the line into voyeurism. In a well timed moment of levity, Elson suddenly appeared at the end of a corridor with his own video camera and, for a moment, we were caught in a ‘film loop’ of documenting each others process of documenting.

Over lunch, Elson gave me a little history lesson about Blantyre, the financial capital of Malawi, as we sat in the shade of a tree in the grounds of an art gallery he frequently supplies works to. Amazed at my own ignorance, I learnt that Blantyre’s origins lay firmly in Scottish territory (as do mine). David Livingstone had left Scotland, come to this place, named it, brought Christianity and left a very considerable mark. Our lunch arrived and I watched with quiet respect and fresh understanding as Bertha said grace.

Being an artist in Blantyre, Elson informed me over a sandwich, is a bit of an oxymoron. There are no art schools and very few artists. It’s not even considered a profession. Those artists that exist, like him, have forged their way to prominence, forming a strong alliance of like-minded people who help each other out whenever they can.

Back at the research centre, I filmed the scientists in action, again marvelling at how similar the process of science must be across the world: pipettes, eppendorf tubes, centrifuges, PCR machines… All that changes is the skin, the bone structure, the culture and the target disease.

Malawi proper

Next up, I was delighted to get out of the centre, to get a taste of Malawi proper. When told we were going to the ‘Hit TB Hut’, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect. But tucked away, near a town, by a mountain, was another man called Frank and his place of work, a tent that he erects on the loose, dusty earth wherever he needs to be.

The low-fi, yet critically important nature of what people like Frank do is stunning. Before interviewing him, I watched he and his assistant in action, speaking with visitors from the local town, collecting data about tuberculosis; trying to piece together human movement with disease. It also becomes very apparent how critical personality is. People like Frank need to gain the trust of the locals quickly, often via meeting and working with the town’s leader. After just a few seconds with Frank, it’s obvious why he’s so well matched to the task: a large, open smile and a firm handshake quickly followed up by a shoulder barge.

Then it was Elson’s turn to be interviewed. A canny man, he took me back to his scenic cottage, in a very nice part of town it turned out – but, as with many places here, the relatively rich rub uncomfortable shoulders with the relatively poor. Elson had also brought a couple of friends along, one, it turned out, a singer of local repute – Agoroso.

After clearing the set of people, we did our interview, much to the delight of the chickens on the grounds who seemed to cluck furiously every time Elson said something profound. As always, the challenge in such a situation (one of ignorance with no possibility of doing a recce), is to do the very best you can with what you have. In this case, I positioned Elson so that he had natural light on his eyes and placed a large piece of his own art behind him as a backdrop.

To compensate for the chickens’ enthusiasm, Agorosso decided to put on a spontaneous performance in Elson’s garden. There followed three, lovely acoustic tracks as we watched and listened, entranced. So entranced that I didn’t notice the tripod get knocked and the camera fall to the ground, smashing its eyepiece off. Trying to regain calm, with two more days of filming to go, I grabbed the camera and quickly noticed it couldn’t focus. My heart started a downward trajectory. Fortunately, common sense kicked in and I adopted what should always be the first course of action with any technical piece of kit: turn it off and on again. To my joy, the camera found focus – we all cheered!

On the way back to the centre, Bertha, my largely silent yet efficient companion, commented on my apparently remarkable ability to remember faces and names. This, it seems, is not a common ability or trait she has witnessed in Blantyre. The other trait she told me I exhibited was a close adherence to “English Time”, a term used to describe punctuality. This will not be a surprise to my colleagues. However, it seemed my use of time as an actual reference point to be adhered to was a largely alien notion.

Barriers

The next day, after having breakfast with the wide-eyed deer, I went with Anja, a clinician working at the Programme, and Bertha to Chikwawa. Located around 40 kilometres south of Blantyre, deep in a hot, steamy basin, Chikwawa is home to the hospital where Anja and many other scientists are fighting an ongoing battle against malaria.

On the journey, Anja explained the issues they face are not just due to mosquitoes but language and barriers to understanding. For example, there is no word in the local language to describe a small tube. This means that when people are being asked for blood samples, they can think they’re being asked to fill up a bottle the size of a soft drink receptacle. Add to this the suspicion that one’s blood may not be used for scientific purposes but to drink and the cultural waters become rather muddy.

Superstition is rife in Malawi. Christianity may have a strong foothold but local healers and witch doctors are commonplace and hold powerful sway over people. This becomes a medical issue when faced with a choice of seeing the local healer, who lives in the village or getting up around 4am in the morning and walking up to 20km to the hospital. People die because sometimes they have no medical options and it’s thanks to people like Anja that the mystery surrounding medical practice is shrinking and the likelihood of medical intervention is becoming a tangible alternative.

The conditions the scientists work in here are rudimentary, cramped and very hot. A single refrigerated room exists to maintain the medicine. Everyone else just gets used to the incredible humidity. Scientists work in rooms no bigger than large cupboards, using simple equipment to try and save lives. The juxtaposition of suffering and sickness alongside selfless people doing their level best to help others survive I found profound.

Then, in a triumph of Malawian over English Time, we were informed that a group of schoolchildren had been waiting for us to show up for around two hours at their local school. We departed quickly, Elson elaborating on why the level of education in Blantyre was relatively poor – a child must be old enough to walk to and from school. So while, in the UK, a child enters school before five years old, here, they can’t learn until they can cover large distances on foot.

Despite the wait, the children, adorned in their best blue and red uniforms, seemed in good nature. No doubt because Elson, ever the marketeer, had told them I had come over from the UK specifically to film them. Observing both Elson and the children working was fantastic. His enthusiasm fed theirs as they drew their own health-inspired art on large, bespoke canvases. Elson’s plan was to collect their art and display it in a gallery.

And then, just as my second camera battery was almost out, something magical happened. Without any warning, the children assembled into a group, and sang. Feet stamped a rhythm and voices joined in harmonic unison to create some of the best music I had ever heard. It was moving. They belted out three songs in all, Elson and Bertha joining in on the last one, singing, dancing, joyous. It was the best possible way to end the shoot.

Barry James Gibb

Barry is a Science Multimedia Producer at the Wellcome Trust.

Read Barry’s previous diary entries.

Find out more about Art in Global Health on the Wellcome Collection website. Find out more about the Malawi-Liverpool-Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Programme