For the very first time, Proteus will have a presence at the annual Edinburgh International Book Festival taking place between 12-28 August this year.
Proteus Project Manager and book fan, Anne Moore, was sat at home browsing the Book Festival brochure when she noticed that there was a series of events planned under the theme “Taking the Air“, described as the following:
“How does storytelling and reading impact on our psychological, physiological and social wellbeing? Taking the Air, supported by The Wellcome Trust, investigates ideas around breath. 1 in 5 people in the UK have a long-term lung-related illness and 115,000 die from lung disease each year. Together with our partners at Durham University’s Life of Breath project, we present a series of truly fascinating events looking at sighing, singing, poetry, air quality and taking our last breath. Events feature a range of authors including Sam Kean, Imtiaz Dharker, Michael Symmons Roberts and Havi Carel.”
Almost immediately, she sends an excited message to Public Engagement Strategist Helen and Communications Officer Amy, saying “We HAVE to get involved in this!” which was met with whole-hearted agreement. The next day, contact was made with the event organisers who were delighted that we were interested in working with them. We were lucky enough to be offered a 3-day free drop-in event in the new Greenhouse venues on George Street.
Trying to think about how we could make Proteus science relevant to an Arts and Literature audience, it was decided that we would create a pop-up gallery of some of our most beautiful images and have a booklet to go with it that would briefly describe what they were looking at. Our special dummy “Morris” would also be taken along to give people a chance to have hands-on experience of ‘diagnosing’ bugs in the lung with our interactive system.
Equally keen to reach a new audience, a plethora of people from the Proteus team have volunteered to attend each day to chat to the attending public about their work, about lung health, and about STEM careers.
We are very excited to be a part of the Edinburgh International Book Festival this year, and hope you can join us!
Tues 22nd – Thurs 24th August, 10:00-17:30, Greenhouse 3 (George St.)
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See https://www.edbookfest.co.uk/the-festival/whats-on/taking-the-air-2 for more details.