ISSF Seed Fund: past projects

2020

Don’t give up on us

Community-based participatory research with young homeless people produced a co-designed workshop programme on health promotion and social participation. The findings highlighted the need to improve professional approaches and support in oral health. A follow-up project, the knowledge exchange programme on youth homelessness developed in Scotland and Brazil reinforced the need to tackle and prevent youth homelessness by co-creating better training materials for those working with young people.

This project will co-design:

1. An e-book training resource on eight themes of health promotion and social participation to inspire and help practitioners to discuss health wider issues with young people.
2. Two comic books on young people’s views on barriers to access services and to engage with practitioners addressed to practitioners working with young people experiencing homelessness.
3. A new Smile4life guide for trainers to cover a wide range of homelessness and oral health-related topics to help practitioners to promote oral health and access to a dentist.

Medicine and Life Science in Dundee Walking Tour (Then and Now)

Amy Cameron (Life Sciences) and Matthew Jarron (Museum Services) plan to produce a self-guided walking tour with an accompanying scavenger hunt. It will take the form of a map designed by DJCAD graduate and illustrator James Gemmill with 3 self-directed walks (City Centre; University of Dundee city campus and West End; Ninewells Hospital grounds). It will feature historical science detail with related input from current researchers in the Schools of Life Sciences, Medicine, Health Sciences, Dentistry and Science and Engineering about their work. The activity has been planned to allow people to learn about past and current science in Dundee in a mode that supports social distancing rules and allows for those without digital access to participate in Dundee Science Festival 2020.

The activity supports the work Dundee City Council is currently undertaking as part of their Spaces for People project which includes encouraging people to undertake exercise and return to the city centre. As Councillor Alan Ross, city development convener said when commenting on the temporary pedestrianisation of Union Street in the city centre, “This is an exciting development to create a new feel around this area, where we are also promoting active travel, and help encourage people to return to the city centre." In addition, the activity aligns with research undertaken in the School of Health Sciences.

Outcomes: Map in paper and digital form with an accompanying webpage was created. Approximately 1000 maps were distributed to people across the City. This included at Dundee Science Centre, in Science @ Home kits delivered to local children, via post, at the Maggie’s Centre and University of Dundee Botanic Garden. The map has also been downloaded approximately 270 times (as of March 2021).

To conclude, the map and webpage provided a comprehensive set of content about life sciences and medicine in Dundee, past and present, in an accessible and enjoyable manner which met the challenges of undertaking public engagement at a distance. The feedback that we received indicated that the map was thoroughly enjoyed by those who undertook the walking routes. The maps will continue to be available and we are investigating how we might reach a wider audience potentially via an audio tour/app.

Home Art in Communities

Vicky Armstrong is a University of Dundee PhD student. The Art at the Start project, a collaboration between the University of Dundee and Dundee Contemporary Arts, has been developing a family programme of early years participative arts activities, including art therapy sessions targeting families of infants aged 0-3. These art therapy sessions take referrals from health and voluntary sector agencies, based on concerns that parents are vulnerable to low wellbeing and mental ill-health and infants may be at risk of attachment difficulties. When Covid-19 restrictions came into place several planned art therapy groups were cancelled, affecting over 40 families. We were concerned about the withdrawal of support for those families, and their likely lack of resources to participate in some of the online activities being offered by ourselves and others over this time. To address this concern, we developed an innovative idea to maintain the families’ engagement in joint art-making. The art therapist produced boxes containing everything families needed to participate in 12 suggested activities (with variation for age and stage), including information on why these kinds of activities are beneficial.

Outcome: Art boxes were sent during the highest restrictions in May 2020. While these were not a replacement for art therapy, the activities were informed by what we have learnt in art therapy sessions about maximising connections. Activities were designed to encourage parents to make art together at home with their infants, fostering connection through playful creative shared experiences. This project will have an outcome of two academic publications and in addition, has been featured in the press and in the recent ‘Dundee Kindness’ exhibition. It has also encouraged DCA to do more of this kind of activity and so the project idea is being carried on in various ways.

2019

Big Back Garden

This is a collaborative project led by Jan Merchant in Archive Services (AS) working with Susan Mains and Christine Kingsley. The project focuses on public places in urban environments and how they, and their histories, contribute to physical and mental well-being. The work combines the interest in how an understanding of the history of a place can impact the sense of identity of individuals and communities with the research of place, identity, storytelling, and the impact of walking in a natural environment on health. The project focuses on Baxter Park. Opened in 1863 with a ceremony attended by over 30,000 people, Baxter Park was the first public park in the city and it still plays a central role within the community. The Park was funded by a jute baron to provide a healthy environment away from the smoke and noise of Dundee’s textile factories; this project seeks to explore how the Park is viewed today, to encourage a re-engagement with its history and to combine this storytelling with a walking trail which aims to improve the health of participants.

The Immersive Cell

This Immersive Cell project was originally conceived as an opportunity to co-produce a film with school pupils (including non-science pupils) that demonstrated the world of the cell to a non-scientific audience. The project planned to engage a small, dedicated group of Baldragon Academy pupils, from across a broad spectrum of interests, and involve them in the film making process - storyboarding the film together, introducing the required software for sound and animation, and engaging pupils with key concepts and skills in both cell biology and film making. This will upskill the pupils, introduce them to disciplines which they may not have otherwise pursued, and show that art and science are not distinct fields, but overlap and inform one another. Creative science requires an artistic thought process and the capacity to think abstractly, whilst great art requires knowledge of the natural world and an understanding of perspective. The film, made collaboratively with the school pupils, will then showcase the extraordinary world of the cell to a wider non-scientific audience online and via events and festivals.

Where do we want to be?

1. Increase engagement between MRC PPU scientists and Baldragon Academy, particularly non-science teachers and pupils, to build on the current partnership between the Unit and the school
2. Increase pupil understanding of key concepts in both cell biology and art
3. Increase pupil employability/skillsets
4. Increase MRC PPU scientists’ skillsets
5. Engage a wider non-scientific audience with the concept of a cell through the artwork produced

2018

Rhythmic Marks

September 2018 – June 2019

The project responds to current research into Parkinson's disease led by Professor Miratul Muqit in collaboration with the artist Daksha Patel. It consists of three strands of activity:

1. An Artist Residency of one week in the MRC-PPU laboratories in the School of Life Sciences, looking at the experimental approaches being undertaken to better understand the molecular underpinnings of Parkinson's. Daksha will return to Dundee for a three week period based in the print studio at Dundee Contemporary Arts to develop a series of new prints in response to her drawings.
2. Four Art Workshops with a group of Parkinson’s patients exploring different art-making processes in response to scientific imagery. We are interested in evaluating their perceptions of body movements through drawing. At the first workshop, Professor Muqit and Daksha Patel will present their research and drawings in relation to Parkinson's to the group.
3. A solo show at GENERATOR projects in Dundee for one week in June 2019. This will include an artist talk where Daksha will share her experiences of this project and a session between Daksha and Miratul in which they will reflect on the collaboration.

2017

Dundee and Me: How the City Shapes our Moods.

January - May 2018

Fhionna Moore (Psychology) and Eddie Small (Humanities) of the University of Dundee, and Robin Sloan of Abertay University will be working with local school children and mental health service users to explore the links between our local environments and our emotional wellbeing. Participants will work together with students of Dundee and Abertay Universities to produce creative writing, computer and performance art that demonstrates how our environment can influence how we feel. The project will culminate in a performance and exhibition for friends and families, which will also be posted online for wider dissemination.

Outcome: The participants produced artwork, photography, creative writing, and performance art in the workshops. From the interactions and work produced by the participants, Robin Sloan, Conor Marshall and other students from Abertay produced two digital games (one for each of the two groups worked with). Evaluation data showed that the majority of participants and volunteers enjoyed the project and found it had increased their understanding of how our city shapes our mood. A short film describing the project is available to view here.

A computer game to educate the public about cancer progression

Dr Adrian Saurin is a cancer biologist studying cell division at the School of Medicine and he received funding for interdisciplinary collaboration to develop a computer game to educate teenagers about how cancer develops and why various risk factors affect that development. The collaboration involves a computer games lecturer (Dr Robin Sloan, Abertay), a medical artist (Dr Caroline Erolin, CAHID/DJCAD), a cancer prevention specialist (Prof Annie Anderson, School of Medicine), and two experts in using games for education (Prof Divya Jindal-Snape and Mr Derek Robertson, School of Education and Social Work). The idea is to allow players try to control the spread of mutant cells that gain cancer hallmarks as a result of DNA mutations. This way the players experience for themselves how cancer develops and why risk factors make the game much harder to control.