What makes you special? What makes you unique? What makes you different? We are all made up of the same things, skin, bone, blood, organs, what is it that makes us different?

 

On Saturday 12th November 2022 we held a children's art workshop called 'What makes you, You?' at the Royal Priors Shopping Centre in Leamington Spa.

We had three sessions, where children (and their parents) watched a presentation by Dr Corinna Clark (Warwick Medical School) on the role of DNA (the instruction manual for making a person) on our identities. We learnt that we can change how our DNA works by the things we do, where we live, and what we eat and drink. And ultimately, while our genetic code is very important, there is more to who we are than the ‘ATCG’s (nucleotides) inside our DNA.

Libby Elser (ArtLAB) and Natasha then expertly guided the children in making a self-portrait to explore their own uniqueness, inspired by Picasso. These portraits were block printed on a collaborative artwork, which Libby is preparing for display. The children could also take home a copy of their self-portrait.

We all had a wonderful (slightly messy) day, and the children did fantastically well with their portraits. The collaborative artwork looks amazing and we are looking forward to being able to display it soon.

Please check the event webpage in a couple of weeks to see a photo of the final piece and details of where it will be displayed if you would like to come and see it.

You can view a slideshow of photos from the event here

If you took part and have not yet completed a feedback questionnaire then we would appreciate it if you could please do this (click purple box above) - it only takes a couple of minutes and your feedback is really important for us, both for evaluating this event and to help us organise future free events!!

To read about the research and the researchers who created the event (Dr Corinna Clark and Prof Felicity Boardman) visit our I:DNA page, contact us via

To contact Libby please visit the ArtLab page here

James and Laura from the Warwick Institute of Engagement will be creating a blog page for event for the Resonate Festival 

To see similar events run by the University please look at the resonate pages here

Part of the 2022 ESRC Festival of Social Science