Planning a workshop

A few weeks ago when I was over at the Royal Marsden I met up with the Arts Officer there, who is both creating an amazing arts programme for hospital patients and also curating and refreshing all the artwork that is displayed around the hospital. I’ll pop up another post with some images from our tour around the hospital at some point soon, but I wanted to record here the ideas we had about involving some of the clinicians who could give a perspective on the idea of the Ecosystem of the London Cancer Hub. The idea of running a workshop for Research Nurses emerged as they are central to the idea of ‘bench to bedside’, which is the intention to create a smooth transition to and from between research and clinical trials or treatments, an idea that feels to be at the heart of the idea of a London Cancer Hub ecosystem. You can find out more about Research Nurses here and about an example of ‘bench to bedside’ here.

After some drafting and conversation here’s the flyer that resulted. I hope it will be a fun experience for some research nurses as well as an opportunity to find out something of their perspective on the ecosystem. The flyer has gone out, and though as yet there are no bookings I am hopeful there’ll be some interest a bit nearer the time!

Researching concepts from cancer ecosystems

One of the initial priorities for my ‘Evolving the Ecosystem’ project was to learn about some of the key ideas and concepts that underpin the study of cancer as an ecosystem. I also want to get to grips with how they might be applied to the work of the teams at the LCH. So my first series of meetings at the LCH have been primarily focused on researchers at the Institute of Cancer Resarch (ICR) who have generously explained the thinking behind their research, sharing ideas and research papers and painstakingly explaining complex biology to a non biologist. First off, I am very grateful to all who met with me from the Biology of Childhood Leukaemia team and from the Centre for Evolution and Cancer teams and who spent time with me on my visits in late September and early October. I am not planning to record the content of each of the conversations here, just to say that they were incredibly illuminating and introduced me to a wealth of ideas around cancer ecosystems.

Darwin’s ‘I think’, mounted outside offices at the ICR

From these discussions I have started to draw out some of the concepts that I think may be useful going forward to inform my artwork. Scattered through future posts I will be sharing selections of the concepts and metaphors I am encountering, with my interpretation of their meaning in the context of cancer, in the context of organisation, or better still, both. I would emphasise here, though, that all the interpretations I am sharing are mine. They may be drawn from conversations with researchers and others but if they are full of errors or misunderstandings, those are entirely my own responsibility.

‘Evolving the Ecosystem’

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…..

The London Cancer Hub

I am truly thrilled to have been awarded an artist residency with the London Cancer Hub. The London Cancer Hub is the collective name for the new site in Sutton which brings together a number of leading organisations in cancer research, such as the Institute of Cancer Research and the Royal Marsden Hospital, along with other key players such as innovative biotech and drug development companies that form part of the Innovation Gateway, and the Harris Academy, a STEM-focused Sutton comprehensive school. The intention is to create a global centre of excellence for cancer innovation.

The residency, part of the Sutton STEAMs Ahead programme and funded by a major Cultural Impact Award, will allow me to spend several months researching and developing new artwork for a project I am calling ‘Evolving the Ecosystem’

I spent my first day at the London Cancer Hub last week, and will be posting regularly about all the things I am learning and how these translate into the prototype artwork I’ll be making as part of the residency. It will be wonderful to share this voyage of discovery with anyone who wants to come along for the ride!