Name: Changing Our Planet, Changing Our Minds
Location: Wellcome Collection

Past events

Listen to this talk with Wellcome Collecton curators Shamita Sharmacharja and Emily Sargent as they discuss upcoming installations by artists Kerry Tribe and Sop. You will be able to see these artworks when we reopen our museum and library.       

After an introduction by Melanie Keen, Director of Wellcome Collection, you’ll hear pre-recorded discussions with Shamita and Emily in the gallery, filmed during the installation of the artworks. Shamita discusses how Kerry Tribe’s ‘Standardized Patient’ highlights the need for empathy between patients and doctors in a clinical setting. Emily will explore Sop’s ‘The Den 1’, uncovering their experience as a shielder during the Covid-19 pandemic, and how they sought respite in nature. Their discussions will explore connections between both artists’ works. 

At the end of the event there is a discussion between Melanie, Shamita and Emily.  The event is live captioned by Stagetext. 

This conversation may mention of end-of-life care.

Melanie Keen is Director of Wellcome Collection. She was previously Director and Chief Curator at Iniva (Institute of International Visual Arts), where she was instrumental in the revitalisation of Iniva’s mission and vision. Melanie is an independent advisor to the Government Art Collection, sits on the British Council’s Visual Arts Advisory Group, and was on the selection committee for the British Pavilion, Venice Biennale 2019. She was one of the judges for Art Fund Museum of the Year 2020 and has recently been appointed to the Board of Visitors of Pitt Rivers Museum, Oxford.

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Melanie Keen

Speaker

Emily Sargent is Senior Curator at Wellcome Collection. She has curated numerous large exhibitions on a wide range of subjects, including 'Living with Buildings' (October 2018–March 2019), and exhibitions on human enhancement and the experience of consciousness.

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Emily Sargent

Shamita Sharmacharja is a curator at Wellcome Collection. In addition to ‘Play Well’, October 2019–March 2020, she has curated exhibitions with subject matter as diverse as health-related graphic design, forensic medicine and outsider art. 

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Shamita Sharmacharja

<p>Login and join the event online with others.</p>

Online event

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Emily Sargent and Shamita Sharmacharja

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The main panel discussion will be captioned by StageText, and the introduction and Q&A will be auto-captioned by Bluejeans, the videoconferencing platform.

Captioned (online)

Join us for a talk with Wellcome Collecton curators Shamita Sharmacharja and Emily Sargent as they discuss upcoming installations by artists Kerry Tribe and Sop. You will be able to see these artworks when we reopen our museum and library on Tuesday 5 January 2021.

Curators Introduce Art by Kerry Tribe and Sop

Watch a recording of this talk and live experiment in which author and historian Jessica Borge recreates some of the 1960s consumer tests of condoms. Watch her fill an original 1967 Durex Gossamer condom first with air, then with water, from her kitchen.  

Jessica also takes you through the history of the London Rubber Company, the original maker of Durex condoms. A pre-recorded interview with John Harvey, a former sales manager at the London Rubber Company, is included, telling you more about the Durex Gossamer condom. 

This event was originally livestreamed on Tuesday 8 December.

Dr Jessica Borge is an interdisciplinary researcher in the field of 20th-century British history, specialising in the intersection of business, society and media. Her book ‘Protective Practices: A History of the London Rubber Company and the Condom Business’ is the first full-length study on the London Rubber Company.

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Jessica Borge

<p>A chance to hear about and talk about ideas with others.</p>

Discussion

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This event will have live speech-to-text transcription, which may be useful for people who are D/deaf or hard of hearing. For any assistance, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Speech-to-text (online)

Watch historian and author Jessica Borge conduct a live consumer-testing experiment on a 1960s condom, and discuss the history of the London Rubber Company.

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Hear from researchers and Wellcome Collection staff about the stories that they unearthed in our collections, and take a closer look at some of the items they discovered.

Library Insights

Condoms in the Kitchen

Watch a recording of a conversation between artist/writer Cheryl Martin and writer Rianna Walcott reflecting on their own experiences of mental health and care practices during and emerging from this global health crisis.  

This online discussion considers what taking care means for Black women, who are simultaneously dealing with the consequences of the Black Lives Matter movement, social distancing and lockdown. How do we develop new care practices to help us embrace radical change? 

‘Supporting Ourselves in Changing Times’ was also part of Bloomsbury Festival (16–25 October 2020).

This conversation may mention suicide, self-harm, and childhood sexual/emotional abuse. 

Cheryl Martin examines experiences most people are afraid to talk about with a humour, warmth and raw honesty that draws audiences in. Her shows tour to studios, as well as non-theatre spaces such as libraries, hospitals, living rooms and prisons. She has won an Edinburgh Fringe First, as co-director/producer of ‘The World Is Too Much’ (Traverse Theatre), and two Manchester Evening News Awards, one for writing and one for directing.

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Cheryl Martin

Cheryl Martin’s website

Rianna Walcott is a PhD student at King’s College London, researching Black women’s identity formation in digital spaces. She co-founded projectmyopia.com, a website that promotes inclusivity in academia and a decolonised curriculum. She has written about feminism, mental health, race and literature for a variety of publications, alongside co-editing an anthology, ‘The Colour of Madness’, about BAME mental health.

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Rianna Walcott

riannawalcott.com

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Supporting Ourselves in Changing Times

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This event is British Sign Language interpreted. A signer will be on screen describing the event. For any assistance, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

British Sign Language (online)

Watch a recording of artist/writer Cheryl Martin and writer Rianna Walcott in conversation as they reflect on their experiences of mental health and care practices during the current pandemic.

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A series of conversations between people with different life experiences who have had to find ways to support themselves and their communities during a global pandemic.

Supporting Ourselves

Watch a recording of novelist and activist Elif Shafak in conversation with nurse and novelist Christie Watson. They talk about the power of stories and explore how listening to each other can nurture democracy, empathy, and optimism about the future.  Elif and Christie talk for 30 minutes, followed by 30 minutes of questions from the audience.

Please note that the audio description is not an additional track; instead the host and speaker describe themselves and any key visual elements they refer to. The event was live captioned by StageText.

Elif Shafak’s new book ‘How to Stay Sane in an Age of Division’ is out now in paperback and as an audio book.  

This event was originally livestreamed on Thursday 8 October.

Christie Watson is an award-winning, bestselling writer. She has been a nurse for over 20 years. ‘The Language of Kindness’ was published in 2018 and was a number-one Sunday Times bestseller, and her latest book ‘The Courage to Care’ was published in September 2020. Her first novel, ‘Tiny Sunbirds Far Away’, won the Costa First Novel Award and Waverton Good Read Award, and her second novel, ‘Where Women Are Kings’, also achieved international critical acclaim. Christie holds an honorary Doctor of Letters for her contribution to nursing and the arts, and is Patron of the Royal College of Nursing Foundation. She is Professor of Medical and Health Humanities at the University of East Anglia.

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Cheryl George

Christie Watson

christiewatsonauthor.co.uk

@tinysunbird on Twitter

Host

Elif Shafak is an award-winning British-Turkish writer, storyteller, essayist, academic, public speaker and activist. She writes in both Turkish and English, and has published 17 books, 11 of which are novels. Her work has been translated into 50 languages. Her latest novel, ‘10 Minutes 38 Seconds in this Strange World’, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and RSL Ondaatje Prize, and chosen as Blackwell’s Book of the Year. An advocate for women’s rights, LGBT rights and freedom of speech, Shafak is an inspiring public speaker and twice TED Global speaker, each time receiving a standing ovation. In 2017 she was chosen by Politico as one of the 12 people “who will give you a much-needed lift of the heart”.

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Elif Shafak

elifsafak.com.tr

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This event is audio described, which may be useful for people who are blind or partially sighted. For any assistance, please email us at access@wellcomecollection.org or call 020 7611 2222.

Audio described (online)

Watch a recording of novelist and activist Elif Shafak in conversation with nurse and novelist Christie Watson, talking about the power of stories and how listening to each other can nurture democracy, empathy, and optimism about the future.

Empathy in an Age of Division

14 to 19-year-olds

Watch a recording of this empowering online discussion on food, fashion and the future. Topics include pay-what-you-can cafés, racial bias in AI technology, and what ‘sustainable’ fashion really means. Three speakers present new ideas for you to explore that might make you think differently about how we can live better with our planet and each other.

This event was created by our RawMinds Youth Ambassadors, who are aged 14 to 19, and is aimed at other young people.

This event was originally livestreamed on Thursday 10 September.

Angela is a curator, researcher and artist. As a ‘creative climate-change communicator’, she collaborates widely with visual artists, activists, speculative-fiction authors and youth groups. She independently curates as Worm: art + ecology and co-founded the London Chinese Science Fiction Group hosted at UCL.

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Angela Chan

Joycelyn is a PhD climate researcher studying the application of artificial intelligence to climate change. She founded the Instagram account Climate In Colour. As a diasporic woman of colour, her work focuses on ensuring that indigenous knowledge systems and marginalised voices are represented in climate science.

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Joycelyn Longdon

Annie’s practice lies between research, video and design to investigate socio-political aspects within sustainability and speculative futures. She is currently studying for an MA in Fashion at the Royal College of Art.

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Annie Mackinnon

Sean-Roy is an artist, environmentalist and cook. He studies the lifecycle of materials, complexities of civic responsibility and building community through collaboration and alternative currencies. He ran Brixton Pound Café, a pay-what-you-can café using surplus food.

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Sean-Roy Parker

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Join our empowering online discussion, aimed at young people, on food, fashion and the future. Three speakers will present new ideas that might make you think differently about how we can live better with our planet and each other.

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Past events

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Past events

Curators Introduce Art by Kerry Tribe and Sop

Condoms in the Kitchen

Supporting Ourselves in Changing Times

Empathy in an Age of Division

Changing Our Planet, Changing Our Minds

Stay in the know

Wellcome collectionWellcome Collection

Finding us:

Opening times:

Today's opening times

Wellcome collection