Cardiff sciSCREEN is a cross-disciplinary programme that promotes engagement between science and the academy through audio-visual media, using special screenings of new film releases to draw on a range of disciplinary perspectives and facilitate debate on contemporary developments in science and the wider social and cultural implications of these advances.
About the Author: Dr Andrew Bartlett, Cesagen, Cardiff University, is a research assistant working on the Genomics and Psychiatry research project, jointly funded by Cesagen and the Wales Gene Park. E-mail: bartletta@cardiff.ac.uk www.cardiffsciscreen.blogspot.com
This March, with a screening and discussion of A Dangerous Method (2012), the film adaptation of Christpher Hampton's play about Sigmund Freud, Cardiff sciSCREEN will celebrate its second birthday. Born in early 2010 and delivered with the support of the British Science Association, the first events ran as part of Science and Engineering Week. Since that time, with the help of a variety of sponsors and the expertise of speakers from across Cardiff University and beyond, Cardiff sciSCREEN has organised seven events, with twenty-nine different speakers, drawing between sixty and ninety people for each after-film discussion.
Each event involves a regular, ticketed screening of what is usually a current release film, followed by an hour and a half to two hours discussion. Over a glass of wine, between three to five speakers are invited to connect the issues and themes raised by the film to their areas of expertise, before the discussion opens up with the audience offering their reflections, comments and questions.
We wanted to engage with publics around issues of psychiatry and genetics ...
The project is the product of collaboration between the MRC Centre for Neuropsychiatric Genetics and Genomics (CNGG) and the ESRC Centre for Social and Economic Aspects of Genomics (Cesagen). One of the driving forces behind sciSCREEN is Jamie Lewis, a Research Associate in Public Engagement at the MRC CNGG. Jamie described the rationale for setting it up:
We wanted to engage with publics around issues of psychiatry and genetics and we thought what better way than to use film to provoke interest and ideas. Film gets people talking and we have found the sciSCREEN format an excellent way for academics and publics to come together to discuss developments in science and their social and cultural implications.’
http://youtu.be/664eq7BXQcM
Since the first of our events, screenings and discussions of A Single Man (2009) and The Wolfman (2010) in March 2010, we have broadened its outlook, building up a strong relationship with Chapter Arts Centre in Cardiff and drawing funding from a number of academic schools and research centres eager to use the opportunities for public engagement provided by the events. The MRC CNGG funded The Hurt Locker (2009), the Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Institute funded our screening and discussion of Inception (2010), the Centre for Business Relationships, Accountability, Sustainability and Society (BRASS) funded the screening of the documentary The Garden (2008), while the Communication and International Relations Division (CAIRD) funded The King's Speech (2010) and celebrated silent horror movie Der Golem (1920). This last event featured a live musical score and was our sciSCREAM! Halloween weekend, which also featured the distribution of a short essay on the psychology of disgust during a screening of the Dutch mad scientist movie The Human Centipede (2009) – for that film our team could not stomach a full event!
http://youtu.be/Yhhfr_hIL7A
Film choice is driven by Chapter Arts Centre’s existing schedule. Hiring prints of older films and booking exclusive use of the cinema is much more expensive than hiring a space for discussion and providing wine and soft drinks. However, riding piggyback on the schedule of a commercial cinema has been a blessing in disguise. Unable to fall back on clichéd options – Gattaca (1997) about genetic engineering or hospital drama One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), etc. – we have instead had to find original ways in which academics at Cardiff University, and beyond, can speak to the films at hand.
... riding piggyback on the schedule of a commercial cinema has been a blessing in disguise.
Cardiff sciSCREEN attempts to bring a broader range of academic expertise than just that of the natural/hard sciences into our events. While some attempts to relate academic expertise to cinema concentrate on explorations of a single theme from a particular disciplinary perspective, our events have included psychiatrists, biologists, philosophers, historians, social scientists, members of academic schools of business and of journalism, as well as experts from beyond academia. Speakers with experiential knowledge have also been very well received by the audiences. For example, at our discussion of The Hurt Locker, the Oscar-winning film on bomb disposal teams in Iraq, two of our speakers had experience of the military – one an ex-military psychiatrist, the other a naval officer; Steve Garrett, a representative of a local market, spoke at The Garden ; and at our most recent event John Evans, from the British Stammering Association, used The King's Speech to speak of the ‘once in a lifetime opportunity to reduce stigma’. The audience were engaged by the passion and experience that these speakers were able to bring to the discussion of these films, while their talks and expertise were able to fit seamlessly alongside the more academically-orientated talks of the philosophers, historians, and sociologists.
Dr Gary Love of the School of History, Archaeology and Religion, speaking at the screening of The King's Speech.
The aspiration to draw speakers from a variety of backgrounds produces an environment enjoyed not just by the audience, but the speakers too. Tracey Loughran, a historian, who spoke at the Hurt Locker event, said that she ‘found the other speakers really fascinating. I will definitely come along as an audience member again’. Other speakers have spoken to us about building new – still tentative – interdisciplinary links. The idea that events such as sciSCREEN can be an engine of intra-university engagement, bringing together academics from a broad range of disciplines to explore their contrasts and commonalities, is something that we are keen to pursue.
http://youtu.be/pzI4D6dyp_o
We have developed a regular audience, to the degree that when screenings are sold out, as was the case with our event around The King's Speech, sciSCREEN regulars will watch the film on another evening and so as to be able attend the post-film discussion. Having an engaged audience is key to making events such as this work. Hilary Rogers, of the Cardiff School of Biosciences, who spoke at the event discussing The Garden said: ‘I really enjoyed the event, it was great! I especially liked the choice of speakers that spanned the range of issues raised by the film – and I was impressed by the audience, who were clearly engaged with the issues and came up with very thoughtful comments’. Many of our speakers, once exposed to the sciSCREEN model, express an interest in attending as audience members at future events. One of our speakers at The King's Speech, Calum Delaney, who is Programme Leader and Head of Centre of Speech and Language Therapy at UWIC, said ‘I very much enjoyed the evening, and I am looking forward to coming along to future sciSCREEN film discussions.’ Once the organised aspects of the discussion are over, speakers and audience mingle and carry the discussion on. Some of our audience members have even proposed setting up a spin-off discussion group that would meet between films.
Der Golem (1920)
Cardiff sciSCREEN is also a research site in its own right. Michael Arribas-Ayllon, a Lecturer in Cognitive and Biological Psychiatry at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences said:
sciSCREEN is a ‘method’ of public engagement which uses film to explore ideas and debates within science; it is an opportunity to create ‘spaces’ and ‘publics’ for engagement, but it also provides an opportunity to research public engagement as a social activity in its own right. The idea of using film as an interface for bringing experts and publics together is one way of disrupting the transmission model implicit to mainstream public understanding of science. Film provides an opportunity to create a common experience around which cultural and scientific themes can be discussed without necessarily lapsing into a hierarchy of communication. sciSCREEN seeks to flatten this model by placing 'experience' at the centre of engagement in order to create a space in which public knowledge about science is negotiated and co-constructed.
Jamie Lewis, one of the main organisers of Cardiff sciSCREEN, summed up the aspirations driving the project:
We originally ran Cardiff sciSCREEN as a couple of one-off events. However, there appeared to be a real appetite for further events, and as we have run events over the past year they haven proven increasingly popular. We have tried to take the original sciSCREEN model of ‘one film-one speaker’, usually a natural scientist, and expand on it to create a new model in which a number of different experts talk to a broader set of themes that are brought up by the film. I think that it is this cross-disciplinary perspective which is key to the Cardiff sciSCREEN identity and helps us to draw a varied crowd. We hope to keep Cardiff sciSCREEN rolling, maintaining the momentum that we have generated for a few more years yet, finding new sponsors and funders, new speakers, and new audiences.
We have set up a blog at www.cardiffsciscreen.blogspot.com, which provides a space for discussion, archiving, and promotion. Almost all our speakers have produced short essays based on their talks, which are on the website and which can then be discussed further. Our Facebook group and Twitter feed also help us to maintain momentum between screenings.
The next Cardiff sciSCREEN will be on Thursday March 1st from 6pm at Chapter Arts Centre when we will be discussing themes brought up in the film A Dangerous Method.
Dr Andrew Bartlett