Dear world project
Dear World Project is a project led by Rachel Bedder working initially in collaboration with artist Alban Low to invite the public to talk about their perceptions of mental health and explore how this interacts with approaches taken by researchers and clinicians. Dear World Project is an installation featuring a post box where members of the public can anonymously send postcards about their own mental wellbeing which are then organised at a sorting office. Scientists are on hand to discuss how we use symptom categories and diagnostic labels in neuroscience and psychiatric research.
This installation was initially run as part of Bloomsbury Festival, The Great Get Together, and the Latitude Festival. The project then expanded to facilitate collaborations between UCL scientists and 7 artists and makers to explore the project’s themes. In total 9 artworks were co-created by scientists and artists and exhibited at Stour Space in East London from 20 February 2020 to 3 March 2020.
in2science
In2Science is an award winning charity that allows year 12 college students from disadvantaged backgrounds to get two week placements in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths (STEM). Students are assigned to laboratories matching their interest and the programme is meant to help them achieve their potential and progress to STEM for further education.
During the summers of 2018 and 2019, we were keen to take part in the project and welcomed the enthusiastic students into our lab. Matilde Vaghi and Millie Lowther organised their visit and the whole lab participated. We ran workshops about emotion, mental illness, data handling, clinical psychology and how to apply to university as well as letting the students come up with potential research projects and present their ideas to the lab. It was a great experience for all of us at the lab as well as for the students!
doublethink
DOUBLETHINK is a video installation by artist and filmmakers Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard housed inside two shipping containers. Visitors are faced with a binary decision - enter the door marked HATE or the one marked HOPE. They can't experience both. DOUBLETHINK was supported by Wellcome and included input from mental health researchers including Robb Rutledge and Rachel Bedder. It was created for Sheffield Doc/Fest.