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ARTS/SCIENCE ‘ENCOUNTERS’: a Review

IV   THE SHEFFIELD INITIATIVE

                  `Everything’s got a moral, if you can only find it´
                    Alice´s Adventures in Wonderland: Lewis Carroll

It was into this unsettled learning environment that the University of Sheffield launched its own series of Arts-Science Encounters in March 2009.
It became quickly clear that something special, and largely unprecedented, was beginning to happen. Specific subject matter apart, what the observer noticed first was the electric influence of the small (but always full-house) public audiences, invariably well-informed and fully engaged. It was their presence which largely created the positive chemistry for most of these exchanges with their rapt, but quietly uncompromising presence. It clearly signalled “we´ll get it, if you will tell it clearly, honestly and in an interesting way” to their distinguished presenters. To which the latter, for the most part, responded; so that an atmosphere of healthy rapport and realistic dialogue was created and grew throughout the series.

There is much to be learned from this for the future of the wider arts/science debate. Our publics now `want in´ to this crucial dialogue and, given the more urgent realities of climate change and the state of our planet, are ready to demand inclusion beyond an occasional entertaining lecture at the Royal Institution. And our more local publics, as the Sheffield innovation showed, have more than a passive role to play. The process is as important as the topic.

And this was by no means the only significant `process´ point to emerge from the Encounters. I was lucky enough to have access to the post-series comments of a number of the senior university presenter/participants – hugely positive, with some interesting surprises. I will come back to these shortly, and the fuller implications of the public reactions; but first I felt the need to offer a slightly different re-classification of the sixteen events - into three categories - each of equal importance but with differing strategic roles within the whole - which I hoped might help clarify some important conclusions.

( See  http://www.shef.ac.uk/english/arts-science/2009/events.html for original sequence)

I suggested these Categories: -

  1. Stand-Alone/Special Events;
  2. Oh! The Wonder of It!;
  3. MaInstream Issues/Controversies.

STAND –ALONE/ SPECIAL EVENTS

1.  DARWIN, CREATIVITY AND TRUTH (7 = position in actual sequence)

Ruth Padel, poet and great-great grand-daughter of Charles Darwin,read from her new book Darwin: A Life in Poems. With Professor Mark Greengrass (History) in the Chair.

2.    CERN AND THE LARGE HADRON COLLIDER (8)

We heard about CERN on Big Bang Day, but why is its work so important?
Professor Dan Tovey (CERN, Physics),  with journalists and BBC Science correspondents

3.     ART-SCIENCE IN PARIS (11)

Paris, city of cultural revolutions, plays an avant-garde role in fusing art and science.
Professor Nigel Simeone (Music), Professor David Edwards (Harvard University, guest speaker),

4.     OPERATING MANUAL FOR SPACESHIP EARTH (15)

An exploration of the works of Buckminster Fuller through Bharathanatyam
Dance.

Each of these four `happenings´which I have classified as Special/Stand-Alone Encounters was, indeed, very special, and each might well have sustained its own mini-series. What they had in common was the celebration of a particular event, location or occasion.

In the Darwin bi-centenary context, the appearance of his great, great grand-daughter and renowned poet, Ruth Padel, to read from and talk about her unique volume, Darwin: A Life in Poems, was a considerable coup. She has great presence and read her work with fine dramatic force. Darwin came freshly alive in the room, packed with an audience deeply engaged in both a moving and thought-provoking experience.

`Art-Science in Paris´ brought together musicologist Nigel Simeone and Harvard Professor ( Engineer/Artist) David Edwards, to celebrate the role of Paris in the creative fusing of arts and science. That alone was a very special thing; but the occasion, as with so many of these events, evoked a wider relevant scenario through Simeone´s Messiaen/Birdsong connection and David Edward´s authorship of Art-Science, the book which had influenced Professor Rachel Falconer in first conceiving the series of Encounters at Sheffield.

The elegant and reflective live art piece, `Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth´, drew on another aspect of the University´s life, and was performed in front of a large audience of chemists taking part in an international conference at Sheffield, with two Nobel Laureate alumni, Professors Harry Kroto and Richard Roberts. This performance, which combined dance, music and a short film involving the Dept of Chemistry at Sheffield, was inspired by the works of visionary thinker/scientist Buckminster Fuller, and fittingly paid tribute to his dream of a cross-disciplinary, multifaceted education.

`Cern and the Large Hadron Collider´ certainly marked a particular, very special occasion – the long-awaited opening of this complex project (`Big Bang Day´) and how this was presented to the world by the media (and especially Radio Four). The media´s handling of Science topics is crucial to the wider Arts-Science debate: so the dialogue between Sheffield´s Cern Physicist, Professor Dan Tovey, and two BBC journalists who contributed to shaping the Big Bang day, proved highly educative, and at the same time, hugely entertaining, with polished presentations of both the science and the media involved.
This `special event´, however, also laid the groundwork for what could become a decisive influence on Sheffield University´s longer-term aspirations in the Arts-Science field. For the Large Hadron Collider is inevitably to become a key focus of future world science.

Dan Tovey´s critical involvement, with his wider Atlas team, puts the university firmly on this map; and its agenda is already eroding traditional definitions of the arts/science boundaries.