My residency at the London Cancer Hub will be spent working on a project I have called ‘Evolving the Ecosystem’. A central goal of the Institute of Cancer Research (ICR) strategy is to unravel the cancer ecosystem; cancers develop and grow very much as part of the environments of our bodies, and a priority for research at the ICR is to understand the mechanisms by which our individual or common internal bodily ecosystems govern whether cancers thrive or fail.

I was inspired by how the concepts we draw from ecology affect not only how a disease progresses, but potentially also how organisations thrive or fail in response to their environments. Below is an extract of the project proposal I put together to explain the research that I want to do whilst on this residency.

“Cancers have increasingly been seen as part of the complex ecology of the body rather than as diseases where rogue cells or tumours can be understood in isolation. Research scientists and clinicians are now focusing on investigating the characteristics and mechanisms of this ecology to find new ways to control or eliminate cancer. The conceptual framework of the ecology of cancer – and how to unravel it – has proved so useful that it now forms a central plank of the Institute of Cancer Research’s (ICR’s) current strategy.

Organisations too can be understood as ecologies. The London Cancer Hub (LCH) brings together a cross section of organisations working towards a synergistic set of goals, forming its own complex ecosystem, an ecosystem aiming to create an impact which is greater than the sum of its parts. How the constituent organisations – involving research scientists, businesses, clinicians, educators, carers and patients – collaborate across the new Hub to achieve this can similarly be viewed as an endeavour to develop a healthy ecosystem.

For this project I want to investigate these parallel ecologies side by side, drawing on frameworks and metaphors usually confined to the scientific context to explore what we can learn about the development of a culture and environment within which the potential for research, treatment and prevention can thrive.

The artwork emerging from the project would act both as an expression of the learning from the project and as a stimulus for further conversation going forward about how to build our capacity to tackle cancer. In addition, the stories gathered along the way would capture a moment in the history of cancer research and in the development of the LCH”.

I hope this conveys some of my ideas behind the project – which will surely also evolve as the project progresses. And if you have any thoughts about this that you’d like to discuss, do get in touch…..