Kallaway - Opening minds

Heartfelt Emotions
A Major Two Day Public Symposium On Emotions & The Battle
Between The Head & The Heart

…Neil Pearson Reads Modern Love… Can You Die Of A Broken Heart?…
… Ard Kumbh Mela, The Largest Crowd On Earth… Emotional Intelligence…

1 August 2007: What are emotions? Can you die of a broken heart? Do we control our emotions, or do they control us? What makes us feel love and hate, anger or joy? These questions and more will be answered at Heartfelt Emotions, a special two day symposium run by Wellcome Collection that brings together experts from the worlds of science, history, art and philosophy to explore the role of our heads and hearts in shaping our moods and behaviour.

Wellcome Collection - www.wellcomecollection.org - opened on 21 June, 2007. During its first month of opening over 25,000 people visited and almost 1,000 took part in public events and tours.

Heartfelt Emotions:

	Dates: Friday 7 September, 1900 - 2100hrs. Saturday 8 September, 1000 - 1630hrs

	Location: Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE

	Booking: Tickets cost £25 or £20 concessions. The price includes entry to event on both days and refreshments throughout (including lunch on Saturday) Booking line: 020 7611 2222. Details at www.wellcomecollection.org/heartfelt

Science is only now beginning to unravel the huge role emotions play in our lives. For example, death rates are up to 50 per cent higher in the six months after loss of a spouse, with the effect greater in men than in women. A second example shows that large crowds can be peaceful and serene rather than stressful as popularly assumed, as illustrated in a study of 'the largest crowd on earth' at the Ard Kumbh Mela Hindu festival in India, by the University of St Andrews. Heartfelt Emotions will explore this powerful field of human wellbeing, set against the increasing interest in emotion.

Highlights include:

	Neil Pearson reads Modern Love by George Meredith. A dramatic performance of one of the world's most poignant and emotional poems.

	Don't go breaking my heart? Martin Cowie, Imperial College. Sweaty palms and a racing pulse can be symptomatic of fear or love. How do emotions have such a powerful role on the body and behaviour?

	Why Spock could not evolve. Dylan Evans, author of The Science of Sentiment. Western thinkers dismissed emotions as luxuries and barriers to progress. Modern thinking is debunking these views, with emerging consensus that emotion is vital to our evolution and intelligent action.

	An emotional history of the heart. Fay Bound Alberti, Univeristy of Lancaster. Only recently has the heart been relegated from emotional core and centre of being to a simple pump, yet it still remains a hugely powerful symbol and organ that we associate with our emotions. Find out how this intimate relationship has evolved

	Collective Emotion - lessons from the largest crowd on earth. Clare Cassidy, University of St Andrews. The Ard Kumbh Mela is the largest gathering of people on the planet and large crowds are often associated with violence and angry emotion. Yet what can this peaceful gathering teach us?

A full programme of the symposium can be viewed at: www.wellcomecollection.org/heartfelt

Heartfelt Emotions is part of a comprehensive programme of public events at Wellcome Collection. Events range from open heart surgery through to discussions about treating teenagers with mental health problems and performances of the Hindu epic 'Ramayana'. Full details for all events can be found at www.wellcomecollection.org/events

Lisa Jamieson, Events Manager, Wellcome Collection, said: "Heartfelt Emotions is an amazing opportunity to pause and consider our emotional intelligence. We're all familiar with the old adage of head ruling the heart, but how much truth is there in this? By assembling some of the UK's leading experts in the field, we aim to provide our audience with the opportunity to explore the pivotal questions in depth and debate their views over an exciting day and a half."

Heartfelt Emotions takes place at Wellcome Collection (www.wellcomecollection.org) the new £30m public building from the Wellcome Trust. The event is linked to the Wellcome Collection's Heart Exhibition, running until 16 September 2007. The Heart exhibition brings together contemporary and historic artefacts from across the world to form an exhibition that traces the history of our medical understanding of the heart and examines its extraordinary medical, symbolic and cultural significance. The exhibition features exhibits as diverse as work by Leonardo da Vinci and Andy Warhol, through to the Egyptian Book of the Dead and live heart surgery.

Wellcome Collection combines three galleries together with the world-famous Wellcome Library, a public events programme, café, bookshop, conference centre and members' club to provide visitors with radical insights into the human condition.

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Notes to Editors

Press information
Wellcome Collection Media Centre: www.kallaway.co.uk/wellcome.htm

Press contacts:
Will Kallaway
T +44 (0)20 7221 7883
E will.kallaway@kallaway.co.uk

Anna Cusden
T +44 (0)20 7221 7883
E anna.cusden@kallaway.co.uk

Further information on Wellcome Collection and The Wellcome Trust is below.

Wellcome Collection: www.wellcomecollection.org
Wellcome Collection is a new £30 million visitor attraction from the Wellcome Trust that opened on 21 June 2007. Admission is free.

Wellcome Collection was opened on 21 June, 2007. During its first month of opening over 25,000 people visited and almost 1,000 took part in public events and tours.

Wellcome Collection is a world first. It combines three contemporary galleries together with the world-famous Wellcome Library, public events forum, café, bookshop, conference centre and members' club, to provide visitors with radical insight into the human condition.

Wellcome Collection builds on the vision, legacy and personal collection of Wellcome Trust founder Sir Henry Wellcome and is part of the Wellcome Trust's mission to foster understanding and promote research to improve human and animal health. The building is centred around three substantial galleries totalling 1350m2:

Highlights include:

	Special exhibitions (650m2): The largest gallery in Wellcome Collection is used to host temporary exhibitions, presenting newly commissioned works and thematic shows structured around topics of medical, cultural and ethical significance. The opening exhibition is The Heart, 21 June - 16 September 2007.

	Medicine Man (350m2): The permanent exhibition contains more than 500 strange and beautiful artefacts from Sir Henry Wellcome's original collection, presented in a rich American walnut-paneled gallery, centered on a large 'Wunderkammer' cabinet.

	Medicine Now (350 m2): The permanent Medicine Now exhibition explores contemporary medical topics through the eyes of scientists, artists and popular culture in a bright contemporary environment.

	Public events: A lively programme of public events expand on exhibition themes. Wellcome Collection's flexible events space, the Forum, will bring audiences face-to-face with prominent experts and personalities from the worlds of art, science and the humanities, to explore current issues and ancient mysteries of human wellbeing. Heartfelt Emotions is the first of ten events in September and October 2007.

Wellcome Library
The Wellcome Library contains over two million items and is one of the world's greatest collections for the study of the history and progress of medicine. The public areas of the Library span two floors of Wellcome Collection and include the fully restored Reading Room, first used as a Hall of Statuary by Sir Henry Wellcome in 1932.

The Wellcome Trust
The Wellcome Trust is the largest charity in the UK and the second largest medical research charity in the world. It funds innovative biomedical research, in the UK and internationally, spending around £500 million each year to support the brightest scientists with the best ideas. The Wellcome Trust supports public debate about biomedical research and its impact on health and wellbeing. Wellcome Trust funding has supported a number of major successes, including:

sequencing the human genome
establishing the UK Biobank
development of the antimalarial drug artemisinin
pioneering cognitive behavioural therapies for psychological disorders
building the Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum
the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, the largest ever genetic study of common diseases such as diabetes, coronary heart disease and bipolar disorder

The Wellcome Trust is a charity registered in England, no. 210183.

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