Yesterday we celebrated the arrival of the fabulous Your Amazing Brain Exhibition with our Brain Festival!
Visitors of all ages were able to explore the Your Amazing Brain Exhibition which has been installed on the ground floor of the Brighouse Building. It features a range of information boards and interactive activities exploring aspects of the brain, from the way we process faces, to the optical and sensory illusions we experience. It is designed and created by the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Neuroimaging, in partnership with Banbury Museum & Gallery.
We were very grateful to the many organisations who came to run stalls and activities including the University of Oxford Department of Paediatrics who ran a stall on baby brains, the Department of Pharmacology and science artist Lizzie Burns who ran a fascinating brain art and discovery room, the Brain and Language Lab who looked at the errors brains make through scribal mistakes, Dan Holloway and his Memory Game, and the Department of Physiology, Anatomy & Genetics who explored hearing and the brain. The Classics Faculty was also represented with a stall exploring ancient and modern reactions to experiences!
We are also grateful to our Museum Council students who designed and ran a range of stalls, ranging from finding out what brain type you have, to unscrambling neurons to exploring the sense of smell to optical illusions. A team of Year Twelves also ran activities such as "lipid bingo", animal brains, and exploring brain scans using giant playing cards. Finally, the Travelling Natural History Museum brought a T Rex which people could get inside and operate, and Apollo Falconry bought an owl and a kestrel!
After all the excitement of the stalls and exhibitions, Professor Sophie Scott delivered a very engaging talk on The Brain: Ten Things You Should Know, and Oscar from Y10 performed some brain and love themed songs at the start and finish. A very big thank you to everyone who took part, whether visiting and exploring, or running a stall and activity.
