Public Engagement
Wellcome funded public engagement in the UK
One Cell At A Time
One Cell At A Time was an ambitious programme of public engagement activities with the Human Cell Atlas (HCA) initiative. During 2020 and 2021, the programme brought together arts and communities, patients and researchers to explore the biological and cellular make-up of the human body.
The programme aimed to show how Human Cell Atlas research could impact how we think about the human body and identify areas where HCA could meet a need, and also aspired to deepen the trust that the public has in scientific research.
This engagement resulted in a range of artworks that respond to the scientific research of the Human Cell Atlas and the communities that enable that work to happen. These artworks are featured in the One Cell At A Time virtual exhibition, which invites people to explore our growing understanding of the trillions of cells that make up the human body, and the role we play in pioneering scientific discovery.
The exhibition features participatory artworks, small-run publications which fuse art, photography and creative writing (‘zines) and creative learning projects.
These works have been created by visual and digital artists, inventors, designers, poets and dancers who have collaborated virtually with members of the HCA, local communities and schoolchildren across the United Kingdom. They have creatively explored the science of the HCA initiative, as well as public attitudes towards body, tissue and data donation for research.
The One Cell At A Time public engagement project has been developed with the support of the Wellcome Genome Campus Public Engagement (WGC PE) team. It is funded by a Research Enrichment Grant from Wellcome Trust (ref: 218597/Z/19/Z).
One Cell At A Time in the Media
June 8th 2021 Winning Cambridgeshire students design card game inspired by the Human Cell Atlas, Wellcome Sanger Institute
April 21st 2021 Teenage poet from Oxford wins human body competition, This is Oxfordshire
April 14th 2021 North Yorkshire Poet Wins International Poetry Challenge About The Human Body, Yorkshire Times
April 8th 2021 Science meets art as Cambridge group starts human cell project, In Your Area
March 26th 2021 ‘How to Build a Human’: Godolphin biologists tackle ‘Little Inventors’ challenge, The Godolphin and Latymer School
Inspiring the next generation - Building partnerships to promote understanding of the Human Cell Atlas in schools, Wellcome Connecting Science Public Engagement
Partners
- Wellcome Sanger Institute, Cambridge, UK
- EMBL-EBI, Cambridge, UK
- University of Cambridge, Cambridge UK
- Newcastle University, Newcastle UK
- King’s College London, UK
- University of Oxford, Oxford, UK
- Royal College of Art
- Newcastle Centre for Literary Arts
- The Poetry Society
Please reach out to us at hca@humancellatlas.org if you have any enquiries.