Arts Residential at the Middlewood Trust

Annie Carpenter (from the Manchester School of Art) and Dr Sam Illingworth (@SamIllingworth) took a mixed group of Art and Science undergraduate and postgraduate students (including our MSc in Science Communication students) on a residential trip to the Middlewood Trust, a Permaculture centre in Lancashire. Using poetry, flower arranging, microscopes and home-made hydrophones the students worked together to explore their environment through an interdisciplinary lens. We found that taking the students outside of their usual comfort zones created bonding experiences that can lead to interesting creative output. 

This trip was funded by a research grant from the Centre for Excellence of Learning and Teaching at Manchester Metropolitan, and the outcomes will be presented next month at the European Geosciences Union.