CBSS takes part in Being Human Festival 2024

In November CBSS members ran five events as part of Being Human Festival, the UK’s national festival of the humanities.

The festival is led by the School of Advanced Study, University of London, with generous support from Research England, in partnership with the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy. Events included interpretative movement, creative poster designs, a women’s health zine workshop, discussion on ‘the decade of the brain’ and a multi-sensory journey of the microbial gut.

It was wonderful for CBSS to be part of the UK-wide Being Human Festival. We had five centre activities over the two weeks exploring different research topics from the cultural dimension of microbiomes through meditation to women’s health desires through zine making. There was fantastic engagement at all events, thanks to all who contributed.

Event summaries and reflections

Students Fight HIV Stigma Exhibition

A small exhibition of posters on stands, with leaflets on the table.
Students Fight HIV Stigma Exhibition

In October and November, sponsored by the Festival of Social Sciences and supported by the Being Human Festival, Sophie Atherton and Garcia-Iglesias conducted a series of workshops with sixth year students from Castlebrae Community High School and George Watson’s College. In the workshops, part of their psychology teaching, they learned the basics about HIV stigma and public health campaigns, reviewed past campaigns, and developed their own posters to fight HIV stigma. The students also got to see the Usher Building and learn about academic careers. The posters were then exhibited in Craigmillar Library for two weeks.

Maiden | Mother | Whore

Five performers pose, pointing and grinning at someone off camera.

Arts Fellows Theiya Arts showcased their interactive multimedia performance/exhibition, Maiden | Mother | Whore on 9 November, at the Southside Community Centre, which was transformed through visual art, lighting, sound and interactive installations. This production, developed as part of a collaborative project with CBSS, explored key tensions in gender, intersectionality and reproductive justice through movement, music, play, and audience participation.  

The audience watched three performances, each exploring, engaging with and responding to gender norms, intersectional experiences and health inequities. Then Theiya Arts, artistic and academic partners, including Ingrid Young, took part in a panel discussion. Together they explored the nature of the collaboration, how the collective’s artistic practice (including classical training in dance forms like Kathak, Flamenco) intertwined with their lived experiences to shape the work, and how dialogue between the arts and humanities research was central to this work.  

Theiya Arts have also developed an interactive and accessible digital experience of Maiden | Mother | Whore.

Wishes, Desires, Demands!

Wishes poster

As Part of the Being Human Festival, Karissa Patton and Andrea Ford partnered with The Living Memory Association (THELMA) and zine-expert Kiersten Hay to hold a zine-making workshop. The workshop asked attendees to creatively reflect on their wishes for women’s health in Scotland. The individual zine pages created by individual attendees will be combined to create a zine about wishes, desires and demands for women’s health. The zines will be available to the public at THELMA’s Wee Museum of Memory at Ocean Terminal in Leith.

Joana talks to an audience, seated on cushions on the floor, with Amanda and Rose sat behind her.
Gutscapes: Meditative Encounters with Microbial Messmates, image credit: Delia Spatareanu

Gutscapes: Meditative Encounters with Microbial Messmates 

Interdisciplinary Research Fellow Joana Formosinho ran an event at the Being Human Festival, together with CBSS Visting Arts Fellows Baum & Leahy. Through an art-science event called “Gutscapes: Meditative Encounters with Microbial Messmates”, participants were invited into a space for sense-making around the social and cultural dimensions of microbiomes. The event included live storytelling, meditative guided visualisation and the sharing of foods. Reflexivity and group discussion were key components of the event. Discussions were lively and touched on topics like care and responsibility for gut health; experiencing being part of a more-than-human web of agencies; and the social importance of raising awareness about the non-pathogenic dimensions of microbial-human relations.

Brain, Self and Society

Martyn and Angie sit posed for a photo
Martyn Pickersgill and Angie Spoto

The 1990s were landmark years for neuroscience. Characterised as ‘The Decade of the Brain’, developments in neurotechnology contributed to renewed conversations about the importance of the brain, lasting well into the twenty-first century. In their Being Human Festival workshop on ‘Brain, Self and Society’ Professor Martyn Pickersgill (Co-Director of CBSS) and creative practitioner Dr Angie Spoto joined a range of participants to explore the ramifications of ‘The Decade of the Brain’ for subjectivity and relationality in the twenty-first century.  

In today’s biomedical culture, do we still think that the brain is as important as once assumed? Participants reflected together on their personal understandings of the relationship between the brain, self, and society, developing their ideas through dialogue and the writing of short stories – narratives which in some ways mirrored yet also challenged and subverted conventional biomedical assumptions.

"It really was a brilliant workshop diving into how our brain and consciousness are codependent but still independent in some amazing ways. I definitely left feeling so philosophical and wondering whether my consciousness could still exist after my brain stopped functioning. It was a fun, relaxing, and chatty event that's perfect whether you're a student, a professional, or just purely interested in brains!"