Thank you for helping us to bridge the divide between art and science, with Coventry's FarGo village...

Last year, thanks to your donations, we ran a beautiful art and academic exhibition to help Coventry's bid for the City of Culture 2021.

Led by Dr Emma Parfitt from Sociology, the exhibit displayed work from seventeen artists and seventeen Warwick PhD students, and was open to members of public, artists, and academics.

Emma says:

"I wanted to try and bridge that divide between art and academia, and for a one day exhibition it was an outstanding success, people’s enjoyment of the day exceeded my expectations. We welcomed about 300 people - many were from Coventry, others were from as far afield as Sweden or Nepal.

We had sculpture, glasswork, paper art, painting, jewellery making, graphic design, and illustration. It was all inspired by different subject areas at Warwick, from Film and Television Studies, to Physics and Engineering. We wanted to create a space which wasn't a traditional art setting, full of whispers and echoes - the day was full of people talking, from all age groups and backgrounds."

Her PhD volunteers described it as "a great opportunity to share work and experience”, and visitors wrote post-it notes with their feelings, enjoying the collaboration greatly. Some of their comments included:

"My favourite pieces are those where the artist has really engaged with the academics work and given it a lot of thought."

"Loved how the idea of St George and the dragon was carried over into pieces of resin jewellery. It isn’t something I thought could be researched.’

"Prenatal depression piece really well integrated and informed each other – you can tell she really responded to the piece."

"It made me look at stained glass in a different way, the complexities of layered glass that the artist explained to me."

"I connected emotionally, Laura’s research reminded me of my father. He has dementia and was not interested in dogs until he had dementia. He now finds them very calming.’

"Thank you for the richness of all the creativity. We want more of this in Coventry!"

"Encouraged to see that you (the University) are encouraging talented artists and their works. This being the first of many?

You can read more about the exhibition in our press release from the time. Meanwhile, thank you to everyone who donates to Warwick and makes projects like this possible!