Back By Popular Demand
Wellbeing In The 21st Century: An Enquiry Into The Nations's Health

30 October, 2006, London: The Wellbeing Series - three FREE public events organised by the Wellcome Trust - is being rerun following sell-out success in July 2006. The Wellbeing Series explores the nation's health through events that ask: What makes us happy? Why does music move us? How healthy can we be?

Experts from the arts, sciences and humanities will discuss and debate with the audience how contemporary notions of wellbeing affect how we think, feel and function. An informal drinks reception will form part of the evening.

The Wellbeing Series is a foretaste of events to be held at Wellcome Collection (www.wellcomecollection.org), a major new public venue from the Wellcome Trust opening in summer 2007. Wellcome Collection will explore the relationships between medicine, life and art in a contemporary and experimental way, enabling visitors to think afresh about wellbeing and human identity.

The three free events are held at the Soho Theatre, Dean Street, London.
1. What makes us happy? 28 November, 1900 - 2100 (BSL interpreted)
2. Full life, long life? 5 December, 1900 - 2100
3. Exploring the rhythms of life, 11 December, 1900 - 2100

Booking Information
Tickets must be booked in advance and are not available on the door.
Booking hotline: 020 7611 8442.
Booking email: events@wellcome.ac.uk

Listen Again
Exerts from the previous Wellbeing Series can be downloaded from the Wellcome Collection website. (www.wellcomecollection.org).

What Makes Us Happy?
Tuesday 28 November, Soho Theatre, Dean Street, London: 1900 - 2100
What is happiness and why is everyone talking about it? We are healthier and wealthier than ever before, and the rising trend isn't over. We have choices and opportunities, access to education and healthcare that previous generations fought to achieve. Yet crime, depression and alcoholism are on the rise: are we happy now?

What Makes Us Happy? Will seek to address whether happiness changes with age, circumstance and culture and what the future might hold for our wellbeing.

Speakers:

• Rita Carter, author of Mapping the Mind, explains what is happening in our heads as our emotions take charge and explores a future where new pharmacological innovations will allow us to directly manipulate the brain to induce feelings of wellbeing.
  
  
• Richard Schoch, Professor of the History of Culture at Queen Mary College, University of London, challenges Western models of happiness as they are currently evolving. He traces the philosophical routes to wellbeing in both East and West and explores the role of history in our future.
  
  
• Felicia A Huppert, Professor of Psychology at University of Cambridge and co-editor of The Science of Well-Being. Her belief is that a shift of emphasis in psychology to researching positive rather than negative human characteristics will yield unprecedented insights into human behaviour, with profound implications for a better society.
  
  
• Chaired by Gabrielle Walker, science writer and presenter

This is a BSL interpreted event

Full Life, Long Life?
Tuesday, 5 December, Soho Theatre, Dean Street, London: 1900 - 2100
What part does medicine play in the future of the nation's health? Can genetics cure heart failure and biology guard against ageing? As new aspirations to lifestyle and longevity push medical demands, are we witnessing changing patterns in the relationship between medicine and culture that promise new visions of public health?

Speakers:

• Tom Kirkwood, Director, Institute for Ageing and Health, University of Newcastle. Faced with an unprecedented population boom in the over 60s and upwards trends in life expectancy in the UK, Tom Kirkwood will focus on the key challenges facing the relatively new field of biogerontology. How do we understand the ageing process itself, and can we cure it? Do the exciting new leads in medical science promise a longer lived and more independent old age?
  
  
• Michael Fitzpatrick, an East London GP for the last 20 years, is a sceptic about modern drives to longevity. He asks: does our quest for longevity lead to the subordination of life well lived? Is it worth living more austere, tedious and fearful lives in the here and now for the sake of two more years at the end? Need we surrender quality for quantity? For him, the key question is not how much longer we can live, but how human society can advance if we do live longer and healthier lives.
  
  
• Anders Sandberg, Research Associate, Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, explores the increasing pressure for what he calls 'transmedicine': the pressure to achieve better memories, sharper attention, longer lives and brain-computer links. In this scenario, medicine is becoming a facet of lifestyle, challenging the traditional notion of what medicine is for. But will medicine disappoint our aspirations?.
  
  
• Chaired by Gabrielle Walker, science writer and presenter

Exploring the Rhythms of Life
Monday, 11 December, Soho Theatre, Dean Street, London: 1900 - 2100 Music has and always will play a key part in self expression, but only now are scientists beginning to understand the part it also plays in our development. Its power to affect us is well known - it can hurt and heal, motivate and move, inspire and empower us. But we are only beginning to understand how, when and why.

Exploring the Rhythms of Life will combine science, psychology and live performance to reveal what happens when music meets the mind.

Speakers:

• Susan Hallam, editor of Psychology of Music and Head of School, Institute of Education explores the brain mechanisms involved in our response to music and traces their development through infancy and teenage years to old age, to discover the emotional and cognitive effects that may be the key to the power of music to move us.
  
  
• Ian Cross, Director, Centre for Science and Music, University of Cambridge develops this theme with findings from his groups' experimental investigations into music as a cultural and biological phenomenon. He will discuss how both humans and animals make sense of sound, how culture shapes our responses to it, and whether in part our health quite literally depends upon it.
  
  
• Paul Robertson, Visiting Professor of Music and Medicine to the Peninsula Medical School, and past leader of the Medici Quartet, brings brain and culture together to explore the scientific relation between music and our emotions. Interweaving live, virtuoso violin playing with a revelatory explanation of how musicians manipulate mood, we will enjoy a rare illustration of the power of music to move us.
  
  
• Chaired by Anne Karpf, writer and broadcaster.

Lisa Jamieson, Events Manager, Wellcome Collection, said: "The fact that the Wellbeing Series proved so popular is testament to how important the issues of health and happiness are becoming to us all. Britain may be healthier and wealthier than ever, but does that make us happier? Using happiness, music and medicine, areas of life familiar to everyone, the three events provide a chance to pause and consider what it really takes to make us happy and keep us healthy. This series, with its mix of speakers from science, the arts and humanities, provides a taster to the exciting and illuminating talks and events we will hold at the new Wellcome Collection when it opens in 2007."

Wellcome Collection
Wellcome Collection, opening in summer 2007, explores the relationships between medicine, life and art in a contemporary and experimental way, enabling visitors to think afresh about wellbeing and human identity. The venue itself will comprise three galleries of permanent and temporary exhibitions, flexible events space, the Wellcome Library, conference facilities, café, bookshop and a members' club. The Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL will also be housed in the building. The Wellcome Collection website is www.wellcomecollection.org.uk.

Press Information
Online Press Centre: www.kallaway.co.uk/wellcome.htm.
High-resolution images of ancient and contemporary Wellcome Collection exhibits can be downloaded from this site. All Wellcome Collection press releases and backgrounders are also available.

Kallaway: www.kallaway.co.uk
Public Relations, Wellcome Collection

Will Kallaway
020 7221 7883
will.kallaway@kallaway.co.uk

Anna Cusden
020 7221 7883
anna.cusden@kallaway.co.uk


Notes To Editors
Wellcome Collection (www.wellcomecollection.org.uk)
Sir Henry Wellcome (1853 - 1936), founder of the Wellcome Trust, was a pharmacist, entrepreneur, philanthropist and collector. His passionate interest in medicine and its history, as well as ethnography and anthropology, led him to gather more than a million objects from across the globe. In 1932 the Wellcome Building at 183 Euston Road was built to his specification and housed the majority of his collections.

Wellcome Collection is a £30m transformation of this building into a major new visitor destination, the first of its kind in the UK. Wellcome Collection, opening summer 2007, explores the connections between medicine, life and art using a contemporary and experimental approach. Audiences from all backgrounds and interests will be inspired to consider afresh issues of wellbeing and human identity.

Wellcome Collection will comprise three galleries of permanent and temporary exhibitions totaling 1350m2, a flexible events space, the Wellcome Library, conference facilities, a café, bookshop and members' club. The building will also house the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine (part of University College London).

There will be two permanent exhibitions: 'Medicine Man', originally held at the British Museum, will showcase a mix of 900 fascinating objects from Sir Henry's original collection. 'Medicine Now' will look at contemporary medical topics through the eyes of scientists, artists and popular culture, illustrating developments in aspects of these topics in the era after Sir Henry's death. The largest gallery (650m2) will host temporary exhibitions and shows, presenting newly commissioned works and thematic exhibitions built around topics of medical, cultural and ethical significance.

A lively programme of public events will expand on exhibition themes, bringing together experts from the worlds of arts, science and medicine to explore the current issues and ancient mysteries of human wellbeing

183 Euston Road is the site of the Wellcome Trust's former headquarters. Hopkins Architects is managing the building's transformation.

Pricing and target age range
Wellcome Collection is free to enter. Most events will be free, although Wellcome Collection reserves the right to charge. Wellcome Collection is principally aimed at adults and young people over 14 years old. Resources for children will be available.

Wellcome Library (http://library.wellcome.ac.uk/)
The Wellcome Library is one of the world's major resources for the study of medical history. Over 600,000 books and journals, an extensive range of manuscripts, archives, films, and more than 100,000 pictures are available for study. The Wellcome Library will be housed in Wellcome Collection. It is currently in a temporary location at 210 Euston Road London, NW1 2BE.

Past exhibitions (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/pastexhibitions)
During the past decade the Wellcome Trust has organised more than 20 exhibitions covering a vast range of biomedical topics, from jellyfish to autism, metamorphosis to pain. In 2003, Medicine Man at the British Museum (a showcase of roughly 700 objects from Henry Wellcome's original collection of more than one million) attracted approximately 200,000 visits. Between 2002 and 2005 the Trust presented a series of five major exhibitions at the Science Museum, culminating with Future Face in late 2004 which attracted 120,000 visits. The Trust also hosted numerous exhibitions in its TwoTen Gallery and funded major projects such as the Wellcome Trust Gallery (home to the Living and Dying exhibition) at the British Museum.

Wellcome Trust (http://www.wellcome.ac.uk/)
The Wellcome Trust, an independent charity, is one of the world's leading biomedical research charities and is the UK's largest non-governmental source of funds for biomedical research. The Wellcome Trust has an asset base of over £11bn, spends over £400 million a year and funds 3,500 researchers in 44 countries. The Wellcome Trust's mission is to foster and promote research with the aim of improving human and animal health. Wellcome Trust funding has supported a number of major successes including:

• Sequencing of the human genome
  
• Development of the antimalarial drug artemisinin
  
• Pioneering cognitive behavioural therapies for psychological disorders
  
• Establishing the UK Biobank
  
• Building the Wellcome Wing at the Science Museum.

The Wellcome Trust's registered charity number is 210183.

END TO ALL