3rd March Keeping In Touch
Online ticket sales have ended. There are tickets available on the door all day.
Events and talks around the topic of communication, its evolution in animals, and history among humans. How we communicate when we don’t want to, and how we fail to when we want to. A day of short entertaining talks linked to longer entertaining activities.
Sunday 3rd March
10.30am-4pm Sallis Benney Theatre, 58-67 Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY.
Tickets £10/£6 online or on the door.
Evolution of communication
Communication is so important that it began as soon as life evolved on the planet. Simon Park will show us how amoebas communicate. David Reby spotlights humanity’s first meaningful grunts. Jessica Horst discusses how children pick up language.
From grunt to tweet
The history of language. Where words came from, how the alphabet happened and the story of printing.
How to Argue
Dan Jones shows the scientific evidence that we have evolved to argue, followed by speed debating workshops to give us all some practice.
Now you see it, now you don’t
How many of our problems are cause by ‘sending the wrong signals’? Do we make ourselves clear? Are we talking gobbledegook? In particular, when illustrating our thoughts, do we draw the right pictures? Simon Rogers will show how infograms work. Myths Morphs and Memes explore how we think, through storytelling and activities.
Hidden messages
Can you communicate unconsciously? What do children pick up about fear from their parents? Sussex University’s Andy Field explores whether children could be less scared if we let them watch MORE scary television.
UCL are looking at the upside, laughing. Laughter’s a powerful effect, so it’s no surprise that we do it a lot, but sometimes we mean it and sometimes we fake it. can
Problems of communication
When people have disabilities and communication is difficult scientists and artists help them to get the message across. Meru have been making communication aids for the disabled for forty years and Downs View School has direct experience of the problems.
Frighton
Ben Simpson, from the famous joke shop, Frighton, is a cartoonist in the Beano tradition. How do they do it? You can learn at the feet of a master
Myths, Morphs and Memes
‘Groupmind’ is a collaborative experiment looking at the way we communicate with the next generation. The ‘next generation’ here being perhaps the other people the room, or the next people to come into the room. The experiment has several strands, using spaghetti towers, map-making, picture consequences and other novel ways to transmit ideas, sometimes successfully, sometimes not.
Kay Walton
Kay Walton spent time with the australian aborigines. She absorbed their culture, and the way they transmit it in their art. Her workshops invite us to try a new way of describing our personal world in pictures. – See more here
City Books
Full range of popular science books for young and old.
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