Through the Petri Glass

✨⚡Stories Zapping SuperBugs!! ⚡✨

I’m still buzzing from an electrifying two-day narrative arc with fellow artists and experts at “Through the Petri Glass” 🧫, a workshop I co-organized with the Global Strategy Lab and the Immersive Storytelling Lab, hosted by the Wellcome Trust in London.

Creative types of every stripe came together to explore how to turn drug-resistant infections into irresistible stories that amplify the impact of antimicrobial resistance (AMR) 🦠 on lives and livelihoods:

📚 Novelists brainstorming with 👩🏾‍⚖️ policy boffins!

✍️ Illustrators swapping sticky notes with 🔬 scientists!

🏛️ Curators collaborating with 👩🏽‍🎤 comic writers!

🎭 Dramatists vibing with 🕶️ AR artists!

We explored transforming invisible threats into indelible narratives that could literally save lives, and learned about the inspiring work participants are already doing – from uplifting performances in marketplaces and clinic waiting rooms in Uganda (Mercy Kukundakwe), to cutting-edge VR visualizing disease from the patient’s POV in the UK (Sarah Ticho), to super-cute cartoons illustrating the cultural context of AMR in Thailand (Kanpong Boonthaworn), to radio dramas and graphic novels imagining an antibiotic apocalypse in a not-too-distant future (Val McDermid and Sara Kenney).

A few brave social scientists joined us, engaging with and enriching the creative process: thanks to Director of the Global Strategy Lab Mathieu JP Poirier, strategic comms master-chief Demetria Tsoutouras, policy wizard Isaac Weldon, and stalwart research assistant Uswa Shafaque for taking the time to participate.

Massive respect and thanks to all the artists and allied visionaries who made this confab such a roaring success: Becky McCall, Emily Scott-Dearing, Kanpong Boonthaworn, Lisa Jamieson, Liz Callegari, Lucinda Jarrett, Madhushree Kamak, Mercy Kukundakwe, Sara Kenney, Sarah Ticho, Sheldon Paquin, and Val McDermid.

Props to the mad live-scribing skills of We Are Cognitive's Patience Rose Nottingham, Elena Gamper and Alex Gilmore.

Deep gratitude to our hosts at Wellcome and the team there who paved the way and/or joined us on the day: Steven Hoffman, Layla Fazal Deverson, Addie Tadesse, Danielle Olsen, Madeleine Weaver, Janet Midega, Rebecca Manaley, Sian Bird, and Sumitra Upham.

But most of all, huge thanks to our fearless leader Caitlin Fisher, Director of the Immersive Storytelling Lab at York University’s School of the Arts, Media, Performance & Design, for nursing the germ of this idea into full-blown, mind-expanding reality.

See below for the event's culminating webinar, "The Power of Art & Storytelling in Tackling AMR: Raising Awareness & Sparking Action."

 

More photos after the jump...