New NeuroArt Gala VI

This year 17 schools from around Catalonia participated in this edition

Arts and Sciences are apparently far from each other but they can be quite close sometimes. Scientific dissemination and citizen science are paving the way for exploring the intersection between these different disciplines to discover and explore the interconnections, since true innovation and knowledge lies in these intersections.

This is why the Institute of Neurosciences of the University of Barcelona, which received the María de Maeztu excellence award, collaborated with the Scientific Culture and Innovation Unit of the UB, the Faculty of Fine Arts of the UB and the Barcelona Contemporary Culture Centre (CCCB) to carry out the NeuroArt project. In order to reinforce the link between neuroscience and art, this project invites schools from all over Catalonia –nineteen schools and about a thousand students-  so that they express different neuroscience concepts through works of art. Before the project starts, several neuroscientists from the Institute of Neurosciences go to these schools to talk about the scientific concepts they will later work on.

The exhibition began with our presenter Marcel Duarte explaining how the gala will evolve. Then Susana Arias, (Mediation’s manager of CCCB), Cristina Maragall (President of Fundació Pascual Maragall), and Jordi Alberch (UBneuro’s director) welcomed all the audience.

Schools were divided in two groups: Axons and Dendrites . The first ones began defending their artworks in front of the jury at the Hall of the CCCB, while the others participated in a Cine-forum debate. This Cine-forum consisted in visualizing short films provided by the Brain Film Festival on themes about mental health, afterwards they did an opened discussion with researchers from our Institute where the students could talk about their doubts and concerns. When both finished they changed their positions.

At the Hall there was the jury, composed by Roser Pueyo: (UBneuro researcher in the field of cerebral palsy and Professor of the Faculty of Psychology), Joanna Sierpowska (UBneuro researcher in the field of Cognition and Cerebral Plasticity and Professor of the Faculty of Psychology) and Cristina Pulido (scientific communicator and also versed in the performing arts, from the University of Barcelona).

On the other room, at the Cine-forum, here were Alba Ortega, José Valenzuela and Katia Verger as the speakers of the debate.

During the jury’s deliberation, Mariona and Irene from the company “5 cèntims” performed an interactive kahoot -quite amusing- with the audience.

Check out the winners of this editions, photos of the event and the artworks presented here

The project

NeuroArt is a science communication project organised by the Institute of Neurosciences. This project was created to strengthen the relationship between art and science. These two disciplines are two ways to understand, observe and describe the world. Nowadays there is a need to work from a multidisciplinary approach to keep pushing the frontiers of knowledge. That’s why we started up this project.

In this project, schools in Catalonia work on neuroscientific concepts through the creation of artistic works, creating a new and strong knowledge innovative. It is unbelievable what they achieve once we remove the division between disciplines.