Sleep Talk: An Insight into Insomnia
Sleep and Creativity…Louise Bourgeois…Body Clocks …
The Cost of Insomnia… Music for Sleepless Nights…Unobtainable Treatments

10 January 2008: Insomnia, one of the most widely reported psychological symptoms in Britain, is the subject of Sleep Talk the UK's first ever public symposium on sleeplessness on 22 and 23 February 2008, at Wellcome Collection.

Ticket costs and booking info below. Press places are available.

Sleep Talk brings together an international panel of experts from medical science, the arts and humanities for a cross discipline discussion on new insights and current understanding of sleeplessness in all its guises.

Science and the humanities are only now beginning to explore fully the world of sleep, the state we all inhabit for a third of our lives. Thirty per cent of UK adults suffer disturbed sleep at some point in their lives and the condition effects health, work performance, relationships and quality of life. Chronic insomnia can lead to mental health problems including depression and the misuse of alcohol or medicines in order to gain sleep. Sleeplessness can be traced back through history and manifests itself in all cultures, though it is not always recognised as insomnia.

Topics for discussion include: Is insomnia a real disorder? What treatments are available (and unavailable)? What does new neuroscience tell us about insomnia? How does the highly acclaimed artist Louise Bourgeois use insomnia for creativity? What are the costs of sleep disorders? How do different cultures deal with sleeplessness and what can we learn from them?

Sleep Talk, created by Wellcome Collection in collaboration with the Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine at University College London, is in support of Sleeping & Dreaming, Wellcome Collection's second major temporary exhibition that runs until 9 March 2008.


Sleep Talk Speakers & Subjects:

	The Solitary Insomniac Kenton Kroker, Assistant Professor of Science and Technology Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada Is insomnia a real disorder? asks Kenton Kroker. Insomnia is not simply one's inability to fall asleep, but a myriad of 'claimed reasons' from delusion to failure of will, and as such is not a 'real disorder' but one that has become publicly owned, linked more to the 'politics of sleep' than personal experience.
	The Science of Insomnia: What helps and what makes things worse Chris Idzikowski, Director, Edinburgh Sleep Centre and Kevin Morgan, Director, Clinical Sleep Research Unit, Loughborough University. New research on brain pathways and the biological clock to improve understanding of the causes of insomnia will be explored. Other topics include how it can be treated, including effective evidence based non-drug treatments not available on the NHS, the costs of insomnia to individuals and society and why mismanaging insomnia costs even more.
	Sleep, Creativity and the Healthy Mind Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience and Head of the Department of Ophthalmology, University of Oxford. Our drive for a 24 hour culture is having unanticipated costs to both our physical and mental health. If continued it may condemn whole sections of our society to a dismal future, says Russell Foster. In Shakespeare's Julius Caesar we are told to 'enjoy the honey-heavy dew of slumber', yet today we abandon sleep and work ever longer hours, in conflict with our basic biology. What is this costing us?
	Louise Bourgeois's Insomnia Drawings Ann Coxon, Assistant Curator, Tate Modern How one of the world's great artists turned her insomnia into a productive, artistic experience. Ann Coxon, will discuss Bourgeois's Insomnia Drawings, and explore how the artist's approach can be used by insomnia sufferers to find solace from the condition. Tate Modern's major retrospective of Louise Bourgeois work runs until 20 January.
	Strange Suffering: Insomnia in Human History Eluned Summers-Bremner, Senior Lecturer in English, University of Auckland, New Zealand Writer and historian Eluned Summers-Bremner will consider how our contemporary obsession with insomnia contrasts sleeplessness in earlier cultures. By looking at how insomnia appears in the art, literature and social arrangements of other societies we may learn to understand insomnia in our own society in a different light. Insomnia: a cultural history, by Eluned Summers-Bremner, published by Reaktion Books, January 2008.

Music for Sleepless Nights
Innovative classical music group, Manning Camerata, will open the symposium on Friday evening with a concert of music by Domenico Scarlatti, featuring Croatian Countertenor Max Emanuel Cencic. The work was written in the 18th century as a curative piece for Philip V of Spain who was a depressive insomniac and was performed to help the king rise in the morning after a sleepless night.

Further music from the same era, composed for similar purpose, will be performed in the Sleeping and Dreaming exhibition gallery throughout Saturday 23 February.

Ken Arnold, Head of Public Programmes, Wellcome Collection said: "Sleep Talk brings together experts from around the world to discuss an issue that impacts on almost one third of Britons. Combining ideas from the biomedical sciences, humanities and the arts in this way is exactly what Wellcome Collection is all about: unparalleled insights into the human condition."

Sleep Talk Ticket Information and Bookings
Event dates	Friday 22 February, 1900 - 2100hrs. Saturday 23 February, 1000 - 1630hrs.
Location	Wellcome Collection, 183 Euston Road, London, NW1 2BE
Booking	Tickets cost £30 or £20 concessions. The price includes entry to event on both days and refreshments throughout (including lunch on Saturday)
Public booking line	020 7611 2222. Details at www.wellcomecollection.org/sleeptalk
Press Tickets	Spaces for press are available at no charge. Spaces are strictly limited and will be allocated on a first come, first served bases. Contact Mike Findlay, 020 7611 8612, m.findlay@wellcome.ac.uk or Will Kallaway 020 7221 7883, william@kallaway.co.uk, to book.

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Press Information


Wellcome Collection media centre and images:
www.kallaway.co.uk/wellcome.htm

Mike Findlay
T +44 (0)20 7611 8612
E m.findlay@wellcome.ac.uk

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




About 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 is a world first. It combines three contemporary galleries together with the world-famous Wellcome Library, a public events forum, a café, a bookshop, a conference centre and a club, to provide visitors with radical insights 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 and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health. The building is centred on three substantial galleries totalling 1350 m²:

	Special exhibitions (650 m2): 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 current exhibition is Sleeping & Dreaming.
	Medicine Man (350 m2): This permanent exhibition contains more than 500 strange and beautiful artefacts from Sir Henry Wellcome's original collection, presented in a rich American walnut-panelled gallery, centred 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 expands 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.
	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.

About 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 over £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 UK Biobank
development of the antimalarial drug artemisinin
pioneering cognitive behavioural therapies for psychological disorders
building the Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum
setting up 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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