The Cambridge Festival of !deas is in the midst of it’s third year as the only free arts, humanities and social sciences festival in the UK. Last year it attracted over 9,000 visitors to over 180 events, and this year is well on it’s way to topping that.
I have been asked by the poet and Cambridge’s Whipple Museum Writer-in-Residence, Kelley Swain, to sit on a panel she is moderating called “INcredible Stories in Science.” Along with my fellow panelists Dr. Marek Kukula, Public Astronomer from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich; novelist and science writer Laura Dietz from Anglia Ruskin University; and Dr. Richard Barnett, Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Fellow, we will be discussing the idea of reputation and credibility in science and art inspired by science. I’m thrilled to be thinking and talking about the connection between science and art once again. Although my last novel was more politically and geographically inspired, my first one, Tangled Roots, portrayed the life and mind of a theoretical physicist and required a year’s-worth of reading about cosmology. The novel I am writing now is combining my two interests in SE Asia and science by portraying the lives of Western doctors who come to Cambodia to set up a Women’s Health Clinic. While I’m writing this book I’ve also been thinking a lot about the connection between medicine and music. The interface between science and art is fascinating, and I know this discussion will bring up all sorts of new ideas for all of us.
If you can, do come by. It’s free and bound to be something special.
I love this idea. It’s not a new idea but I think it’s long overdue that we make links between the behaviour of artists and scientists. They aren’t mutually exclusive and can do an enormous amount to inform one another as well as the public who may know one discipline but not the other. I hope you have a fabulous time and I look forward to hearing about it.