Have you heard the term SciArt before? In this episode, we explore what it is and the benefits of combining art and science as a research and communication tool.

Our Co-host for this episode is Elli Wright, Public Engagement Manager at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine. Elli told us ‘...effective science communication can really connect people and communities with research. Science communicators and public engagement professionals want to reduce the elitism built into society with regards to who is allowed to access scientific knowledge. Science belongs to all of us which is why effective science communication is so important. There are many ways that science can be communicated to the diverse public audience, including through art.’

Natasha Niethamer shared with us, ‘the more we engage others about public health concerns that require global efforts to fight, the more likely we are to inspire community action, driving interest in policy makers and funders. Directly inspiring even one teacher, parent, young person, or community member may indirectly inspire a large network of their own. You may inspire the next major activist of our generation!’

Listen on to find out more about how a playful approach can bring new insights to your work.

This episode features:

Dr Elli Wright - Public Engagement Manager, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Elli has been working in the science communication and public engagement sector at Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine for nearly 8 years. She is currently studying an MSc. in science communication at the University of the West of England, which has given her a stronger understanding of the theories behind science communication practices. Her research explores the use of autoethnography as a tool to the co-creation of the Tropical Medicine Time Machine by artists Tom Hyatt and Natasha Neithamer (also featured in this episode).

Mark Roughley - Senior Lecturer 3D Digital Art, Liverpool John Moores University

Mark is a Senior Lecturer in 3D Digital Art at Liverpool School of Art and Design and a member of the Face Lab research group that explores faces and art-science applications. Mark trained as a medical artist, gaining his MSc in Medical Art from the University of Dundee, and specialises in visualising anatomy through 3D data acquisition, modelling and fabrication. His research focuses on the affordances of 3D digital technologies for both digital and haptic interaction with anatomical and cultural artefacts. Mark is also the programme leader for the MA Art in Science programme, which provides exciting opportunities for artists and scientists to collaborate and explore the boundaries of art and science.

Tom Hyatt - PhD Student at the Liverpool School of Art & Design, Liverpool John Moores University

Tom is a polymathic artist, musician, scientist, educator, and maker from Rossendale, Lancashire. After graduating with a Masters in physics and philosophy from Oxford University he moved to London to pursue grassroots music and a career in the arts, while teaching maths and physics. He moved back up to Liverpool after receiving a PhD scholarship to study at the Liverpool School of Art and Design. Recently he has been working with Natasha Niethamer to create the ‘Tropical Medicine Time Machine’ for LSTM – a multifaceted piece of sci-art public engagement that encompasses the length and breadth of LSTM’s prolific 125 years.

Natasha Niethamer – SciArtist, Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine

Natasha is a SciArtist commissioned to create a pop up museum for LSTMs 125th Anniversary, along with a set of interactive loan boxes for use in local primary schools. Natasha has a special interest in sci-art activism and public outreach in microbiology and antimicrobial resistance. In 2020, she graduated from the MA Art in Science programme at Liverpool John Moores University. Her final MA project, an interactive choose-your-own text adventure called Bacteria, The Future, follows the heroic journey of a human from the 2050s travelling back in time as a bacteria to administer antibiotics to novel resistant microbes inside Hugh Manity, an unfortunate human in our present day, to save future humanity from the urgent global health crisis of antimicrobial resistance (AMR). Natasha also has an academic and professional background in microbiology, and since graduating spent time working in Dr Adam Roberts’ research lab at LSTM studying AMR mechanisms of evolution in clinical bacterial isolates. She grew up in California, USA and obtained a double major in Microbiology and Molecular Biology at Cal Poly SLO. She worked in plankton research, as an emergency room scribe, graphic design, and as a university science tutor.

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Hello listeners.

I'm Dr.

Kim Ozano, the host of the Connecting Citizens to Science Podcast, where we discuss how researchers and scientists can come together with communities and people to solve global health challenges.

We are really exploring something interesting today, the intersection between art, history and science.

We will be hearing more about the importance of using art scientists to connect with people so that they can access science and research more readily.

To help us explore this science communication a little bit more, we have co-host Elli Wright from the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine.

She is the public engagement manager and she has a real passion for science communication.

We also have three amazing and very interesting guests.

Mark Roughley, who is a senior lecturer in 3D digital art at Liverpool School of Art.

He is trained as a medical artist and he specialises in visualizing anatomy through 3D data acquisition modeling and fabrication.

We also have two SCI artists, a terminology we'll be hearing about.

One is Natasha Niethamer, who has a special interest in science and art activism and public outreach in microbiology and antimicrobial resistance.

We also have Tom Hyatt, who is a polymathic artist, a musician, a scientist and educator, and a maker.

Elli, welcome to the podcast as a co-host.

Tell us about your work and why do we need this intersection between art, history and science?

Hello to the listeners.

I am public engagement manager at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine with a background in microbiology.

Effective science communication can really connect people and communities with research.

Science communicators and public engagement professionals want to reduce the elitism, um, built into society with regards to who is allowed to access scientific knowledge.

Science belongs to all of us, and for these reasons, this why effective science communication is so important.

And there are many ways that science can be communicated to the diverse and heterogeneous public audience, including through art.

So it's a great opportunity for scientists to work with SCI artists like Mark, Natasha and Tom to tell a story of their science to the public.

Thanks very much Elli.

One of the things I keep hearing in lots of the different, uh, circles that I move in, in relation to science and research, is that Covid was a, the first time we saw

So I'd be curious to see, did Covid 19 change the environment around science communication?

It certainly did.

Kim.

Yes.

Um, it kind of showed scientists that they needed to communicate their work effectively, clearly, make science available and accessible to them.

Yeah, and I think as we try to increase the trust in science again post Covid, it's really important that we learn communication skills

So our guests today have expertise in that area.

Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Mark, what is, uh, SCI artist?

How do you become one?

Tell us a bit about what you do and why this is important to increase our trust in science.

Uh, thank you, Kim.

It's, it's nice to be invited to, to speak with you all today.

That term, SciArt people might see more commonly on a hashtag on social media, and that really is kind of where it developed and emerged from, but actually before

So one from the Wellcome Trust, which was their SCI art project that ran for a number of years.

And then even, um, the Arts at Cern programme.

So Cern being the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Switzerland.

The kind of arts-based arts initiative that's been going for a number of years allow people to encounter art and science in different ways, and it's led to

So I think maybe it's worth a saying when we talk about science, we might be talking about STEM subjects, subject science, technology engineering, and maths more generally, and then art is kind of

You mentioned that kind of social diffusion of information through communities, um, almost like a vaccine spreading through populations.

Um, that's a great affordance of this visual medium in this specific circumstance to communicate that science something wider.

That helps, uh, situate it.

Elli, you are situated at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine as a science communication expert.

So I'll leave you to take over this conversation to demonstrate to our listeners how these different disciplines come together.

Thank you, Kim.

Mark, just to follow on from what you've just said, a lot of our scientists at LSTM might say they aren't creative.

They feel that they maybe can't connect with SCI Art.

Can you dispel that myth?

It's almost the conversation I have with my foundation year art and design students when they say they can't draw.

We can all, we can all draw in some way and we can all engage in creative activity.

It's having that openness and that willingness to engage with some of that and what we don't want people to do is then think, oh, I, I'm not able to contribute to a

Some of the things that scientists do.

Taking microbiology, for example, looking through a microscope and generating beautiful visualizations of something and a very different scale to the way we see the world.

That is a creative process.

So I think there's a kind of a, a hesitance some people to acknowledge that.

Um, but I think once that hurdle has been jumped, there's an ability then for us to really think creatively across disciplines.

This kind of also leads then on for a question for Tom and Natasha, really, as they've been conversing with scientists at LSTM, they've been working on a project

How have you both been liaising with the scientists at LSTM?

What have you learned from collaborating with them and co-creating your science intervention project?

First of all, I suppose we should say what we've been doing as a project.

Um, so we've been meeting with researchers to interview them a little bit about their work.

Researchers from right across LSTM, uh, in order to create a tropical medicine time machine, which it encompasses the length and breadth of LSTM's 125 year history.

Natasha, do you wanna say anything about how those meetings have gone?

It's been really important to establish that trust.

Being able to work with all these amazing scientists at LSTM , from the get go, trust and being open to ideas is really important, because as, um, as a collaboration, you

Since what you're doing is something that's never been done before and relies on both of your previous experience and expertise.

And so in these discussion with LSTM scientists, it's been, um, incredible to explore that initial trust and then working together to be

And, um, to those scientists that question their ability to be creative, it's like Mark said, scientists are some of the most creative people I know cause they're continuously

That's the same thing that artists are doing as well.

I think both artists and scientists have a lot to discuss and learn from each other and grow together to, uh, create something that's never been done before and to connect

Thank you Natasha.

Um, you are right when you see the scientists engaging with both you and Tom, it is superb.

It's lovely to see how they become engaged with your practice they begin to think more playfully.

Keeping with that theme of trust, can you perhaps share an example of how trust is improved by using SciArt practices?

I think, um, where trust is a kind of key issue in terms of scientific visualisation or scientific illustration, always kind of

There's quite a few research studies that have proven that there is an effective use of the arts to raise awareness and change behaviours in those circumstances.

That's really interesting on the trust and I think, you know, getting scientists to get out of their comfort zones, and I love this idea of playfulness as well.

It sounds like science and art can also be data collection in the method itself.

You're saying it collects people's stories and it's about understanding, you know, lived realities.

So it would be nice to hear a little bit more about that side of things rather than just presenting research, how you can engage earlier on in the research and science process.

I sort of have this personal worldview about how our art and science fit together, which is, that they are distinct disciplines with different aims.

Engaging in art, you effectively are trying to find out, how humans work and engaging in science more, at least as a pure idea, is trying to find out how the external world works.

Um, and of course those two things cross over a great deal, so you have to incorporate both sets of methods if you wanna find out things.

You talked about working with, with people and communities.

Um, we've talked a lot about that artist scientists relationship, but the public's more generally are the ones that are affected by all of these, um, kind of interventions.

And we were talking off, uh, earlier, about this kind of cooperative co-creative approach.

And so we call this the arts-based practiced research.

And those things are really fantastic to see, embedding more in kind of science outreach activities where sometimes dance or photography or painting

Um, But they can also promote a dialogue between stakeholders, not based on certain assumptions.

So between a patient and a doctor, for example.

Um, and especially within those health-based experiences, there's an opportunity to interrogate and then integrate patient or personal stories or lived experiences

The best people for that is, is children.

Children are great to work with in public engagement outreach activities because they are sponges and then they go and diffuse all the information as much as possible to the world around them.

They experience the world very differently to us as adults, and that's really exciting because they are the often the ones who will make creative responses to something because

A great phrase, I dunno if it is my dad's, but I do attribute it to my Dad right now.

Um, he's John Hyatt, he's an artist and scientist too.

Um, is this idea of being childlike but not childish in situations, and it brings us back to this idea of creative play.

I think children are fantastic at playing, and letting go of any inhibitions or they don't have them in the first place.

It's through that play and, and not being self-conscious and worrying about your identity as a scientist or an artist or whatever, that progress can be made in either discipline.

And I think our conversations with researchers the last few months have been a kind of environment in which you can see people loosen up to the idea of playing with

Childlike not childish.

And that kind of extends like how we engage with people as well.

How we do that playful investigation and even that gamification of, of science or health information as Natasha has done, um, in her own research and practice

Oh, Natasha, gamification.

What is this?

Gamification is taking a concept that may be abstract, hard to understand.

You know, when you go to the doctor's office or you like, listen to a lecture and your eyes glaze over and you're like, okay, like, this is important, but, um, I don't

Um, in my own practice, I created a game called Bacteria The Future, um, a reference to Back to the Future, where you become a bacteria and you travel back in time.

So it's all about time travel.

I love science fiction.

And so that hence the, uh, integration of time travel into the LSTM tropical medicine time machine.

Um, I think it's engaging and the world does too because we have so many, um, incredible sci-fi, uh, TV shows.

Uh, but getting back to gamification, people get out of work and then they play games.

They watch TV shows which include these interactive choice based mechanisms.

And so in public engagement realm, in the science realm, especially when dealing with something that LSTM deals with, global health concerns and bringing awareness to global health

And, um, public engagement is so important to those that are studying global health crisis, but it is a tough, heavy, abstract field, and so gamification is showing a lot of promise to

Uh, and by making it a game, by making it fun, um, where you're the bacteria in my game, um, and you're able to choose your name and choose your adventure through the guts and you're able to be in

Amazing.

I want to play this game!

Thank you for all your insights.

I think this is a really good point to get some advice from you on how those that are interested engaging with science and art, how they might go about it Let's start with Tom, some advice.

I think the main barrier to either an artist working with science or a scientist working with art, is the preconception that the identity of

Um, I don't think there's that great a difference between the two, and I think the two disciplines have techniques and methods that can help either one.

So my advice to both groups would be to rid yourself with the preconception that it's not for you.

Doesn't matter what your experience at school was like, or what you spent most of your life doing, everyone has that capacity to play,

Excellent.

Release your identity and begin to play.

Natasha piece of advice, please.

I wanna emphasise, like Tom said, being open to these conversations, and obviously if you had, you know, a bad experience with

They exist on a spectrum.

I consider myself both an artist and scientists and people say, oh, but you're more a scientist cause you know, you got a degree in microbiology or you're more

Um, but really they both go hand in hand, and I've experienced, um, so much fun with, with both incredibly creative expertises.

Excellent.

Be open and join hands so that you can learn from each other.

Mark.

I wanna pick up on what Tom just said there about almost those labels and actually, what my students tend to find when they enter the art

So at some point they will see themselves more of an artist, so more of a scientist.

And it's interesting for me to see at what point they stop calling themselves one or the other, and they become this kind of art science

I'm gonna end with some kind of like a questioning sort of thing for you all.

We pose two questions to our students when they first arrive and it's around kind of process.

So we ask, do scientists work to develop solutions for problems that should be testable and repeatable by others in order to be considered true?

And do artists work to invent problems that only they can solve, but in doing so, reveal particular truths?

Those are just statements that, I'm not saying that's a fact, but what's kind of common to both of those processes?

What's common to both of those statements is process.

And that process produces different knowledge of different kinds and in new ways and it's really hoped that, um, these art science collaborations do

Beautiful.

Thank you very much.

And Elli, a take home message.

Thank you, Kim.

Um, take home message.

I guess this is to people who would label themselves as a scientist, um, work with people from other disciplines, like artists, storytellers, musicians.

They might help you communicate your science in a different way that's playful and engaging to audiences out there.

Um, so thank you.

Thank you very much.

I will definitely take home this concept of play.

I think that's so important and something we've not covered before.

So thank you everyone.

Thank you to our listeners again for joining us in this episode.

Do like, rate, share, and subscribe so we can continue to bring these interesting conversations of how we can better connect with people and communities so that we can address challenges together.

Thank you for now.