Output details
34 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
University of Edinburgh
Stem Cell Revolutions
Funded by the Wellcome Trust Society Award (190K), the making and distribution of ‘Stem Cell Revolutions’, a feature-length documentary, represents experimental research through practice into several aspects of the documentary making process. Issues of aesthetics versus information, definitions of truth, epistemology and audience engagement were examined in a creative working process over five years.
Firstly, this involved interdisciplinary exchange between Hardie and stem cell scientists, notably Professor Blackburn (Edinburgh) and Professor Smith (Cambridge), in which the questions posed by Hardie provoked reflection on the scientists’ engagement with their subject and its social, economic, ethical and political context i.e., the camera did not merely record, but mirrored its subject in the making of the film.
Secondly, the design of the public engagement for ‘Stem Cell Revolutions’ was itself a practical experiment. The ‘roadshow’ format that Dr Hardie designed with Professor Blackburn was planned to challenge the traditionally passive reception of cinema, bringing audiences into conversation with leading scientists and clinicians, and thereby leading to further research questions – both for Hardie as a film-maker and for Blackburn as a stem cell scientist. Events have been held in nine countries to date, with further requests continuing for public engagement screenings and television, leading to a reach of over 800,000 viewers.
In 2012, having being brought together for ‘Stem Cell Revolutions’, Scottish developmental biologist Sir John Gurdon (b.1933) and Shinya Yamanaka (b.1962), a Japanese stem cell researcher, were jointly awarded the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine and, later the same year, Hardie and Blackburn were awarded the Tam Dalyell Prize for Public Engagement with Science. Government briefings in the UK, Europe and Japan attest the value of the tools and further media developed through the project, including at the European Parliament in December 2007, chaired by Pia Locatelli MEP.
