Our current Artist in Residence

Peter Arnott, Resident Playwright April 2011 – April 2012

Creative engagements with artists and writers form a valuable part of the work of the Genomics Forum.

Artistic residencies have included:

• a visual artist who made installations
• two fiction authors who established the Human Genre Project and launched successful poetry and short story contests relating to genomics
• a playwright working towards a genomics related play

The core idea of these artistic residencies is that creative individuals find new ways of expressing the insights that derive from social research on today’s life sciences, and this has been borne out in the arresting images and intriguing fiction that has been generated.

Playing a key role in the life of the Forum, artists raise memorably unorthodox issues allowing us to broaden our debate. Additionally, they have formed unexpected and novel forms of contact to our natural science colleagues, both because scientists are often more inclined to participate in an artistic event than a social science one and because our artists’ insights appeal to scientists. A story or a dramatisation can create a focus for thinking and discussion that is both about natural science and about an issue’s social dimensions.