Creative Producer, A Drop of Hope
A participatory art project using local community voices to transform a covid-19 vaccination centre at the Francis Crick Institute into an evolving display of poetry and colour during the peak of the global pandemic.
The Francis Crick Institute is a biomedical discovery institute researching the biology underlying human health. During the covid-19 pandemic, their public engagement gallery was transformed into a vacciantion centre. Thousands of visitor contributions, reflecting on their experiences of the pandemic and receiving the vaccine, were collected to inspire the work of 12 poets-in-residence. These multi-lingual poems formed the basis of a layered and dynamic rainbow collage. New poems and colours were added over time, reflecting how the individual actions of those coming to be vaccinated contributed to a larger cumulative effort. Read and listen to the poems here.
Film by Ed Prosser for Francis Crick Institute
The project was recognised by the World Health Organisation for its innovative approach to science communication and won a D&AD award for its design.
In addition to creative producing this challenging public art project, I also initiated a collaboration with the Royal National Institute for the Blind and NaviLens. "NaviLens has been designed specifically to enable blind and partially sighted people to be able to access and locate information and interact with the environment around them" (more information here). Incorporating NaviLens turned a purely visual display into an auditory landscape of poems, which expanded the accessibility of the artwork.
