Everyday Creativity in the Sciences: Sonia Contera

On 10 May 2024, we organized the “Everyday Creativity in the Sciences” sandpit at the Physics Department of the University of Oxford.  We were delighted to welcome Sophie Layton (artist), Rox Middleton (physicist and artist/communicator), Samantha Lish (physicist and artist) and Sian Tedaldi (outreach scientist), and members of the Everyday Creativity network. They shared their work as multidisciplinary artists and scientists, and reflected on their experiences engaging with different communities (medical staff, children patients and their parents in hospitals, audiences and participants in science outreach events ) through creative practices . After their presentations, the discussion was on the potential for collaboration, multidisciplinarity and creative work to break boundaries and frameworks, the common ground of science and the arts, the role of creative practices in mental health and wellbeing in academia and the potential of everyday creativity practices to contribute to democratising and humanising science and technology.

Artist Sofie Layton sharing her work as an artist bridging, through artistic collective practices, the interactions of scientists, doctors, children and their families as the children receive complex medical treatments in hospitals, during the “Everyday creativity in the Sciences” event at Oxford Physics, May 2024