Parasites: Battle for Survival
WCAIR may have been officially launched in 2017, but a lot of work went on behind the scenes before that. One of our key public engagement projects launched in late 2019 that had been some time in development. Parasites: Battle for Survival at the National Museum of Scotland.
We developed the exhibition in partnership with the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh, and of course the expert curators from the Museum. When many people think of museums, they probably think of old things; history, ancient objects, perhaps black and white pictures of people from long ago. With Parasites: Battle for Survival, we put our focus on the contemporary. While we looked at the history, we were more interested in telling people what’s happening now, and Scotland’s world-leading role in fighting parasitic diseases.
The show gave our visitors the chance to explore how we find out about parasites and how we make new medicines. We also featured fascinating objects from our labs and from places where the diseases are found.
We’re ran workshops for school groups, and we were part of Edinburgh Science Festival. This inclduded sessions on how we run our cycle of design-make-test in the Drug Discovery Unit. We also played Heal the World, our large-scale, interactive board game where you can be a game piece.
Irene Hallyburton, one of our scientists, was a particularly generous contributor to the exhibition. As well as being a featured model on one of the interactives, she donated a multi-channel pipette to the Museum’s collection. This was used in the very early days of the Drug Discovery Unit, setting up some of our first cultures.
It’s was interesting to see how the public respond to a scientist who doesn’t necessarily fit the perception of what a scientist looks like. With purple hair, tattoos, piercings and commonwealth powerlifting medals, several teachers asked if their pupils could meet Irene.
Susan Wyllie was featured in the exhibition, talking about how her Mode of Action group helped the world by finding a fail. We’re really keen that people discover that science isn’t about being right all the time. It’s about taking risks, being tenacious and reporting honestly. If we only did things we knew would work, the world would have very few medicines.
The exhibition was planned run from 6 December 2019 all the way until 19 April 2020, although the Covid pandemic meant we had to close a little earlier. Nonetheless, we saw fantastic audiences, with over 35000 people visiting the exhibition and leaving fantastic feedback. We had an incredibly positive experience working with the Museum, which meant that we were keen to have future museum-based collaborations…
