Creative Brain Week, connecting brain science & creativity, back at Trinity College

Creative Brain Week, a collaboration between Creative Aging International and The Global Brain Health Institute at Trinity College Dublin has rapidly achieved local and international significance with entertaining examinations of how brain science and creativity collide. Now in its third year, it takes place once again in Trinity College Dublin from March 4th – 9th and over the week it will seed new ideas into society, culture and health with talks, exhibitions and workshops including:

• The changing perception of specialists in brain injury who acquire a brain injury
• The underlying neuroscience networks of love and longing
• The minds of extreme swimmers willingly swimming amidst jellyfish and freezing waters
• The Brain Science of paying attention or… not.

Brian Lawlor, Site Director of the Global Health Institute at Trinity said of Creative Brain Week “Creativity is a pathway for everyone, and I believe there is huge potential for creativity to promote health and wellbeing at a population level – it’s almost like a common language across cultures. But there are a lot of unanswered questions – how does it work, what is the brain science behind it? Each day during Creative Brain Week we will explore the power of creativity in the brain and for the brain with wonderful examples from Ireland and around the world. So get ready for a rollercoaster of creativity that will challenge and change your brain for good”.

Marshmallow Laser Feast:

Invites you to navigate with sensory perception beyond the everyday. Where is the line between where you end and the world starts?

My Brain Robbie:

Aspiring to keep young brains healthy inspires artists, scientists, and activists to make the world a little better. Founder Eleonore Bayen is in Dublin for Creative Brain Week and will be joined by Dublin schoolchildren from three different primary schools.

The inaugural Pratchett Prize:

Acknowledges the contribution of a scientist, artist, activist, or person living with the condition who collaboratively or separately, works to reduce the impact of Alzheimer’s.

Seminars:

‘Breaks & Joins’ creatively explores how we repair ourselves, our stuff, and our communities. How to live with what can’t be mended. Or break what needs to be broken.

This is What Love Feels Like? invites you to body map your experiences of love and care.

Performance

Poet Morag Anderson and Autumn Brown experts on Silence

Amelia McConville of the Arts + Science Salon Podcast reflects on Attention, Connection and Love.

‘The Tightrope Walker’ written and performed by Jenny McDonald is a testament to the care and connection we find in challenging times of ill health.

Exhibitions

1 in 6 by 2030: Earth’s population is about to become the oldest it has ever been: by the year 2030, 1 in 6 people will be over the age of 60. Photographers around the world show us what it looks like. This is the first time that this exhibition is being shown to the public so a world first for Creative Brain Week.

“Less Visible Threads:” Somewhere between a space for conversation and a vibrant pop-up library displaying stories of arts and health evolves over Creative Brain Week.

Video, short films and installations dedicated to reducing stigma by telling the many stories of life with a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s from around the world.

World Health Organisation Arts and Health lead Christopher Bailey will be on a mini tour of Ireland for Creative Brain Week visiting local programmes in Cork, Limerick and Galway where creativity and science combine for improved care. In the closing moments of Creative Brain Week 2024, he will reflect on how local experience connects with global issues.

Christopher Bailey said “I am really keen to visit these projects and meet their supporters, learn how they started and understand what sustains them, particularly in these uncertain times. As part of Creative Brain Week, I want to see what the experience of locally seeded Irish projects suggests to the rest of the world and I believe that Ireland is a world leader in this field”.

Dominic Campbell co-founder of Creative Aging International and co-producer of Creative Brain Week said “Ireland has become a world leader on the topic of brain health and we look forward to a really engaging week for everyone who attends. Creative Brain Week continues to expand with the event in Dublin sparking satellite projects in far flung destinations such as Egypt, Botswana, India and Australia for the first time this year”.