Arts Awards Funded 2011–12

Small Awards: Awarded April 2012

Andrew Dawson
The Chasm and the Sorrow, Anton Chekhov and Sakhalin Island: research and development
£20 000
Artist Andrew Dawson, neuroscientist Jonathan Cole and Chekhov’s biographer, Donald Rayfield, in consultation with medical historian Marius Turda, will explore Chekhov’s extraordinary journey across Siberia to the penal colony on Sakhalin Island in 1890. At great personal risk, Chekhov toured settlements, interviewed thousands of people and categorised disease and conditions in one of the largest studies of the time, publishing the results in the book ‘Sakhalin Island’. The book combines literary observation with medical data in an attempt to humanise the conditions there. The project will culminate in a theatrical workshop and exhibition to explore Chekhov’s relevance today and question how his experience in this penal colony influenced his subsequent, more famous, literary output.

Richard Sandell
Stories of a Different Kind
£30 000
Stories of a Different Kind is a collaborative project involving artist Mat Fraser, the Research Centre for Museums and Galleries, the Hunterian Museum, the Science Museum, the Royal College of Physicians, and SHAPE. The project aims to engage the public, as well as professionals in the field of biomedical science and museums, with a reassessment of widely held assumptions surrounding disability. This will be achieved through a new artistic work – a live performance using museum objects and blending drama, comedy, dance and cabaret – shaped by a collaboration that brings together expertise in the history of medicine, disability, museums and public engagement.

Jack Lowe, Curious Directive
After the Rainfall
£7 200
‘After the Rainfall’ is a new piece of devised theatre by Curious Directive in association with Watford Palace Theatre. Working with writer Alice Birch, they have created a piece of work for presentation at the Edinburgh Fringe 2012 (as part of Escalator East to Edinburgh’s programme) and Watford Palace Theatre. The piece explores the cultural impact of social media on the evolution of human psychology, drawing on the study of ants to explore the interface between humans and technology. Curious Directive will collaborate with a myrmecologist, an evolutionary biologist and a social media expert in the development process.

Gary Thomas, Animate Projects
Navigations
£29 850
Navigations is a project about the brain and the respective how medical science and art attempt to understand it. Artists Iain Gardner and Alec Finlay are working with the medical team and researchers at Glasgow’s Beatson Institute for Cancer Research and the Beatson West of Scotland Cancer Centre to develop and produce two short artist’s animations and a series of digital prints, which will be exhibited online, in cinemas and galleries, and at health care sites. The project is curated and managed by Animate Projects and Paintings in Hospitals.

Poppy Burton-Morgan
Surface: research and development
£29 960
‘Surface’ is a new opera piece by Metta Theatre that explores the relationship between voice and self, and the path to communication of those with locked-in syndrome. Interweaving music, sound and video, the piece follows the journey of a physically paralysed but cognitively-aware patient. Both a powerful human story and a fascinating insight into cutting-edge assistive communication technologies, the piece is created collaboratively with the Royal Hospital for Neuro-disability. The research process will include interviews conducted with patients and will culminate in two semi-staged performances.

Gareth Williams, Scottish Opera
Breath Cycle
£30 000
Respiratory consultant Dr Gordon MacGregor will collaborate with Gareth Williams, composer in residence at Scottish Opera, to explore the frailty of voice and traditionally held opinions of voice projection in opera within the context of cystic fibrosis. People with cystic fibrosis cannot be in a room together because they are in danger of passing infections to each other. ‘Breath Cycle’ will examine the cultural impact of the condition, specifically the enforced separation of people who have cystic fibrosis.

The collaboration will culminate in the creation of a song cycle of ten songs for broadcast on a bespoke website, which will also document the process. The song cycle will also receive 20 public performances across Scottish Opera’s annual repertoire in 2012, including a discussion event.

Jacek Ludwig Scarso
Julius
£30 000
‘Julius’ is an imaginary coming-of-age story, depicted through a fusion of physical performance, film and innovative music- theatre. It explores the issues raised by obsessive compulsive disorder with a particular focus on the experience of intrusive thoughts. With an original text and a new music score, it will result in a live theatre production accompanied by a film installation, education programme and discussion events, as well as written and video documentation. The project will be researched with the contribution of experts in psychiatry and medical history and in collaboration with London Arts in Health Forum, Bethlem Museum and OCD Action.

Small Awards: Awarded January 2012

Nancy Evans
Birmingham Contemporary Music Group
“Resolution”
£29 788
'Resolution' brings together emerging biomedical scientists and composers to work with young people at Key Stage 4 to create new music that explores the theme of inflammation. It is a partnership project between Birmingham Contemporary Music Group and the Rheumatology Research Group based at the Institute of Biomedical Research at the University of Birmingham. The project will consist of professional development for the composers and scientists, in-school composing workshops, the creation of online resources and scores, and a public discussion and performances.

James Wilkes
University College London
“Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience Poetry Residency”
£8605
As poet-in-residence at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience (ICN), James Wilkes will collaborate with Professor Sophie Scott and other researchers to produce a new work of poetry that engages with the Institute's neuroscientific research into speech production and processing. James will also write a research blog and curate three public conversations between neuroscientists and humanities researchers. The residency will culminate in the publication of James's work and an interdisciplinary symposium, co-hosted by the ICN and the London Consortium, bringing together poets, neuroscientists, literary scholars and philosophers. Recordings and films of these events will be made available online.

Phillip Warnell
Kingston University
“Ming of Harlem”
£30 000
'Ming of Harlem' is an experimental documentary film examining the case study of Ming and Al - a Siberian tiger and an American alligator - who secretly shared a high-rise Manhattan apartment with New Yorker Antoine Yates until 2003, when the discovery of their story caused a public outcry and widespread disbelief. Working collaboratively with psychologist Dr Sarah Knight, the project draws on interviews with those directly involved and project advisors, presenting an analysis of animal studies through ideas and images of human-animal relations. Framing anthrozoological research in a film format, it will discuss and investigate the use of predatory, territorial creatures as extreme pets, proposing four further perspectives: Yates, both animals and the apartment as protagonists.

Shirley Chubb
“Significant Walks”
£29 127
'Significant Walks' explores the reality of walking for individuals with chronic lower back pain. Initiated by the collaborative team of artist Shirley Chubb, musculoskeletal physiotherapy specialist Professor Ann Moore, biomedical engineer Dr Kambiz Saber-Sheikh and digital artist Neil Bryant, the project involves a group of participants from East Sussex. The aim of the project is to present an immersive digital artwork synthesising eye-level video documentation of the participants' personal walks with simultaneously gathered biomechanical data. Exploring the interpretive qualities of visual effects processes, the team will then work with participants to identify the most effective ways to express the nature and challenge of their personal movement. The resulting films will be presented at visual arts and science venues, including learning and public environments, where the life-size scale of the work will engage viewers in micro-journeys that both interpret clinically accurate data and express individual experience.

David Clegg
“The ‘Occasional Cobra’ Project”
£15 800
David Clegg has spent more than 9000 hours interviewing people with dementia in care homes and hospitals, often returning to the same people over several years to document changes in their autobiographical memory and language use. This project opens up for research and creative purposes a vast, uncensored archive of this first-person testimony to offer an insight into the progress of dementia and into aspects of national and social history that are too often forgotten. Experts from the biomedical sciences, linguistics, philosophy and the arts will have the opportunity to share ideas between disciplines and edit the individual stories. Leading actors will then record their adaptations as dramatic monologues, and the results of the project will be released as a book and CD pack. The book will combine newly commissioned essays, digital imaging and hand printing to explore visually how the dementia has changed the stories over time. David will be working with Andrea Capstick of Bradford Dementia Group, Dominic Ffytche of the Institute of Psychiatry and Alison Wray from Cardiff University School of English.

Caroline Horton
“Mess”
£29 988
'Mess' is a new theatre piece by Caroline Horton based on Horton's personal experience of anorexia and recovery. Created by artists in collaboration with experts from King's College, Maudsley Hospital and the Ethox Centre, it is darkly funny and deeply moving and offers a window into an internal world of addiction, control and obsession, finally rejected for the outside world. It aims to open up discourse about anorexia that is robust and accessible to a non-specialist audience. 'Mess' will launch at the 2012 Edinburgh Fringe Festival and will tour to studio theatres.

Nicola Triscott
“Systematic Art - Revaluing Autistic Thinking”
£19 535
Jon Adams is an artist with Asperger's syndrome. His art reveals his naturally systematic thinking: his inclination and ability to uncover systems within everyday interactions and landscapes. Adams will work with Professor Simon Baron-Cohen, Director of the Autism Research Centre in Cambridge, who believes that systematic thinking is one particular characteristic of people on the autism spectrum. Through a process of residency, conversations, testing and making, Adams will develop a 'stratigraphic symphony', a sound performance incorporating visual material, and an online presentation that can explore this subject.

Emma Hunter
“Stream”
£8525
'Stream' is the research and development phase of a collaboration between visual artist Emma Hunter and heart imaging consultant Philip Kilner of the Royal Brompton Hospital. 'Stream' will focus on water flow properties inherent in the structures and flow dynamics of the human heart and blood system. The artist will create a body of work that will be a poetic reimagining of the inner landscape of the human heart, capturing its embodiment of water and inviting the viewer to make visual connections between inner and outer landscapes.

Alexandra Coulter
Dorset County Hospital
“2 kidneys 5 tales”
£25 500
Filmmaker Peter Snelling and renal dialysis patients at Dorset County Hospital will explore experience of renal failure, the science and pressures of diet restrictions, and the tension between home and hospital life. A renal dietician will collaborate with the filmmaker and participants to creatively explore the relationship between renal science and lived experience. A local food producer and cook will encourage a creative and imaginative approach to a restricted diet. The filmmaker will create five short films with the patients about the subject.

Small Awards: Awarded October 2011

Yvon Bonenfant
“Ulalalia”
£29 998
This research and development project supports the construction of a performance installation for children aged six to ten to explore vocal anatomy, the science of vocal sound and speech science. Children will invent magical words and choruses of vocal sound by playing with ways they can speak and vocalise in a digital environment at The Point in Hampshire. The artists will engage with an expert from voice medicine and an international scientific advisory panel in the development of the work. They will also involve young people, teachers and carers in testing and refining the interactive experience. Age-appropriate and curriculum-adapted science education activities will be integrated into the work.

Kate McGrath
“Body Pods”
£30 000
Body Pods is a series of podcasts created by 12 artists and 12 biomedical scientists in collaboration, each inspired by a different part of the body. Based on their previous set of commissions, Everyday Moments, these pieces will be artworks in themselves, using the podcast form to engage audiences in their own time and space and intimately communicating to them as individuals. Distribution will be one per month through Fuel's website, through media partners and, potentially, through listening points within scientific and medical institutions.

Jordan Baseman
“R.I.P.”
£29 896
'R.I.P.' is a 16-mm film, events series and website exploring western culture's relationship with death as seen through the experiences of an embalmer, an alternative funeral director and sociologists from the Centre for Death and Society at University of Bath. It will investigate aspects of contemporary embalming, including the technical and anatomical processes, as well as the philosophical and sociological significance of the practice.

Dienka Hines
“Science and Superstition”
£29 990
'Science and Superstition' explores the extraordinary life and times of Lydiard Park's herbalist and society hostess, Lady Johanna St John, using a combination of her correspondence and medicinal writings. A collaboration between Lydiard Park, Sixth Sense Theatre, biochemist Professor Timothy Peters and historian Clare Hickman, the project will develop and produce a site-specific youth theatre performance with accompanying lecture series and education pack illuminating her life and practice.

Zoe Mendelson
“This Mess is a Place”
£29 830
Through large-scale installation, an interdisciplinary public event and fiction writing, 'This Mess is a Place' builds upon connections between collection and compulsion in Zoe Mendelson's art practice, interpreting current psychological understanding of hoarding disorder. Through consultation with clinical psychologist Dr Alberto Pertusa and nurse consultant in cognitive behavioural therapy and mental health Satwant Singh, the project investigates the psychopathology of hoarding, its onset and its treatment, and questions how and when hoarding separates from collecting to become pathological.

D R Hood
“The Session”
£30 000
'The Session' is a short animated film examining communication between a schizophrenic patient, family members and professionals (the family therapy team). The film draws on material from a family therapy session to illuminate communication within a family unit in the context of schizophrenia - when the patient's reality is in a different dimension to the family's reality. The film will be made in consultation with consultant psychiatrist Dr Tom Stevens and will be a mix of stylised live action, stop frame and hand-drawn animation. Three different directors of animation will highlight the three different perspectives and conflicting 'truths' of those present in the therapy session.

Suzy Glass
“Lighthouse”
£30 000
Working with psychiatrists specialising in the treatment of seasonal affective disorder, arts producer Trigger will install a sculptural prototype installation created from white light sources inside Kibble Palace, a glasshouse in Glasgow's botanic gardens, in January 2012. Local arts organisations and venues will co-curate with Trigger a programme of performance within the space to attract audiences to experience the installation. The aim is to build dialogue around the research into the impact of light on our health.

Mick Gordon
“On Torture: Research and Development”
£30 000
The play 'On Torture' will explore the psychology and ethics of torture. It asks two questions: 'Why do good people do bad things?' and 'How do we judge them?' 'On Torture' will critically explore the social and environmental factors that affect individual behaviour. The team will research the theories of experts - such as Professor Philip Zimbardo (originator of the Stanford Prison Experiment), Professors Alex Haslam and Stephen Reicher, and psychologist Dr Jeffrey Kaye - as well as personal experiences of torture victims and ethical perspectives on the subject. The final piece will be a multi-layered exploration of the factors that influence human behaviour in extreme circumstances.