Cambridge Creative Encounters

An exhibition of discovery and exploration of research through collaborative artistic creations

The creative outputs for 2022 were launched with a celebratory event on 17^th March 2023. The exhibition took place 17^th-28^th March during Cambridge festival.

Join us for a unique exhibition of art and design creations that showcase some of the world’s most burning questions in novel and creative ways. We challenged our researchers to work with creative professionals to rethink the ways they communicate their research, by means of artistic practice, graphic design, illustration, poetry, performance, photography, animation and moving image.

"[CCE changed] my understanding of how significant and useful public engagement can be in an exercise in clarifying your own thinking and research aims"

(2016/2020, researcher)

ABOUT THE PROJECT

The collaborative artistic set of projects were first initiated in 2016 as a film project. The project was relaunched in 2020, with three additional programmes:

Short films
VERY Shorts, a series of animated and illustrated GIFs
Partnerships, media students from a local further education college were paired up with a researcher to produce a short film
Behind the Curtains, short plays based on their research supported by professional theatre makers.

One of the long-term outcomes of the project has been continued collaboration between some of the researchers and filmmakers, films and animations have been screened in film festivals and researchers have used their creative outputs to reach new audiences including schools, charities, policy makers and patient groups.

In 2021, Cambridge Creative Encounters evolved further, adding Creative Snapshots, focusing on Photography and Creative Words, on creative writing. A new partnership was formed with Babolin Youth Theatre taking Behind the Curtains in a new and exciting direction where researchers worked in collaboration with members of the youth theatre to produce micro plays based on their research.

List of categories 2021

Cambridge Shorts
Cambridge Snapshots
Cambridge Word
Cambridge Partnerships
Cambridge Behind the Curtains

This year we are very happy to collaborate with the Cambridge School of Visual and Performing Arts students and lecturers as part of our partnerships category, which will present research through a range of media by a selection of established and up-and-coming artists.

The combined skills of researchers and creative professionals bring research at Cambridge to life. Through these creative pieces, we hope to inspire and reach wider audiences- and create opportunities for conversations and questions where we can each share our knowledge and understanding.

Please explore, question and share your thoughts and ideas with us.