Archives: Exhibits

Many aspects of modern life pollute our indoor air. How can we improve our indoor air quality through good ventilation? This exhibition explores the various pollutants that affect our indoor environment, how you can ventilate well, alongside commentary from business owners trying to improve ventilation due to Covid-19.

Beliefs, values and feelings in practitioners’ engagements with data mining for drug discovery

Otis Mensah, musician/writer and the first Poet Laureate of Sheffield, and ENON Films collaborate with  Dr Itzelle Medina and  Dr Jo Bates from the University of Sheffield to produce a short storytelling performance exploring how data scientists’ beliefs, values and feelings interact to shape how they engage with AI techniques to inform drug discovery in the pharmaceutical industry.

Find out more about the research project at the Patterns in Practice website.

Is Sheffield’s musical history simply a tale of men and their machines? Or is there more to it? Can objects spark new stories? We thought there were missing narratives, so we invited women+ to share their experiences of music making in Sheffield by showing us an object.

Dementia dramatically affects the healthcare system and our personal lives. This exhibition created by Dr Iain Croall, Medical School, Andrew Stratton, Department of Computer Science, and designer Ruby Fox explores the lifestyle choices we can make to help prevent it. It features an interactive display for people to see how dementia changes the brain through real, 3D medical brain scans.

Can You Hear Me? Are inequalities in health inevitable? How might we ensure a fairer, healthier future for everyone? Researchers from the University of Sheffield, Fuse and London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine explored young people’s perspectives on health inequalities. An art installation inspired by the research has been created by Ignite Imaginations’ artist Lois Conlan and young people from Chilypep and YMCA Barnsley.

About the research project 

Set against a backdrop of rising poverty levels and austerity measures, and exacerbated by the recent pandemic, health inequalities in the UK today are worsening. Across the lifecourse (from preconception to the end of life) and a range of different health outcomes (both physical and mental health), the more affluent members of society fare consistently better than the less affluent. However, we know very little about what people actually think and know about health inequalities, and what could or should be done about them. Young people’s perspectives are particularly absent.

Our project, carried out during the Covid-19 pandemic, worked with young people aged 13-21 from youth groups in South Yorkshire, the North East and London to find out their ideas about health inequalities. We asked young people: What influences your health in your local area? What do health inequalities mean to you? What would you change in your local area to help reduce health inequalities?
We used participatory mind mapping techniques and contemporary news articles to stimulate discussion.

Young people in our study demonstrated really thoughtful understandings of the links between wealth and health. They described the everyday challenges of life on a low income and explained how different factors (e.g. cost of healthy food, safety concerns in the local area, poor housing and long working hours for parents) compounded each other. They discussed regional inequalities in health and wealth in terms of both a North – South divide and more locally between neighbouring areas. They also described how health inequalities were perpetuated over generations.

You can find out more about our project on our Fairer Health webpages.

About our Festival of the Mind Exhibition

For Festival of the Mind we have teamed up with Ignite Imaginations – a local participatory arts organisation. Find out more about them at the Ignite Imaginations website.

The organisation has a pool of talented and professional artists who work in many different communities and so we connected with their artist Lois Conlan.

After reading about the research, Lois created a series of 4 arts-based workshops, to build upon the research with young people. Lois was invited to work with 8 young people who were supported by Chilypep and YMCA Barnsley and the next stage is for their thoughts and ideas to be used as centre stage within the final installation ready for the Festival. Across the summer Lois will be moving into the design and building process of the sculpture; from sound editing, drawing up technical designs for the carpenter and creating files ready to be cut on the laser cutter.

An animation created by Diva Creative Ltd using research by Professor Fiona Boissonade, Dr Ali Khurram, Professor Dan Lambert and Professor Graham Stafford, School of Clinical Dentistry. It looks at advanced technologies in dental research such as artificial intelligence, spatial transcriptomics and nanopore sequencing. It explains how cutting edge technologies work and how we are using them to advance the frontiers of research linked to cancer, gum disease and chronic pain.

Professor David Forrest, School of English, has collaborated with writer Rachel Genn,  Debbie Ballin and Human to create Battledress. This immersive gallery piece explores working class women’s fashion and the rituals of getting ready and going out. It encourages participants to reflect on their own coming of age experiences through music, fashion and rebellion and asks ‘what outfit makes you feel most powerful?’

In 1980’s Sheffield, we dressed in jockey silks, danced like we meant it and fought because we had to…

R Genn, 2021

Battledress is a new two screen immersive using archive and oral history material by Genn, Ballin and Human, commissioned by Festival of the Mind, that explores working class women’s histories of fashion, fighting and allegiance.

You could get into Turn Ups nightclub in 1980s Sheffield if you were 15, but only if the bouncers fancied you. If they did, you could be wearing whatever you liked: jodhpurs, Prince of Wales check suits; you could even be carrying a walking cane. We weren’t fully out of the shadow of A Clockwork Orange, and so found ourselves getting away with a tasteless mix of aristo and militaria. It would be nearly ten years until Bikini Kill released ‘Rebel Girl’ but we already lived by the lines, “That girl thinks she’s the queen of the neighbourhood, I got news for you, she is!”

R Genn, 2021

Want to take part?
Share your Battledress. Tell us what outfit made you feel invincible. Did you ever have a fight? What for?
@Battledress80s
#Battledress80s

Dr Simon Bell, Sheffield Institute for Translational Neuroscience, has worked with artist Kate Sully and with patient and support groups for people with dementia. The resulting artwork combines Kate’s art with work by people with dementia, carers and families to describe the journey through dementia.

Sick building syndrome, which is caused by poor air quality in offices, makes employees ill.

This installation — created by Artist Jo Peel and Dr Ross Cameron (Department of Landscape Architecture) — shows how plants can help to improve the air quality in our workspaces, as well as the health and wellbeing of those who work there.

You’ll never look at that spider plant the same way again…

Aerial scrubbers

Plants are nature’s answer to air filtration and conditioning units. They cool the air around us and filter out pollutants. Placing plants in our working environments is one of the best ways to improve that environment.

Our offices are full of small organic pollutants called volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Given off from printers, paints and carpets, these can cause headaches, sore throats and tiredness – a phenomenon known as sick building syndrome.

Thankfully, plants absorb and deactivate these VOCs and are a useful tool in reducing the occurrence of sick building syndrome in modern offices.

But we are also discovering a lot more about the health benefits of being close to plants!

Mood movers

Plants directly affect our mood, but did you know that different plants influence our mood in different ways?

Viewing green foliage and cool flower colours — blues, purples and whites — relaxes us and has been proven to reduce stress levels. In contrast, hot flower colours — orange, red and yellow — provide moments of joy, or so called ‘positive affect’.

Importantly, both these emotional responses are linked (separately) to longer term mental health benefits.

All in the mind?

We used to think that the benefits of viewing plants were purely psychological, however, recent evidence suggests some benefits are actually physical.

Plants and soils host microbial groups that boost our immunity and regulate human hormone levels, which is good for our long-term health. Plants themselves release compounds into the air — like in aromatherapy — some of which have anti-cancer properties.

So, whether it’s a jade plant, Swiss cheese plant or weeping fig, consider introducing plants into your workplace; you never know, it could be a life saver!