Parasite Street Science
In 2019, Professor Annette MacLeod's Group along with colleagues from the School of Life Sciences began working with Surge, a Scotland-based organisation that develops street arts, circus and physical theatre. The aim of this collaboration is to explore the use of street theatre in engaging new audiences with our research. In this case, the MacLeod Group's work on African sleeping sickness.
Members of the Macleod Group and undergraduate and postgraduate students from the School of Life Sciences worked with theatre professionals from Surge to create a performance that was premiered at the Merchant City Festival / Surge Festival in Glasgow in July 2021. Surge have spent some time in the lab with the Macleod Group, and researchers have taken part in several creative workshops to develop the piece. Early in 2020, the collaboration received a grant from the Microbiology Society to support the project.
In 2022 the project received funding from Wellcome-ScotPEN and is a collaboration between the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology, University of Glasgow School of Life Sciences, Surge, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences and Malawi VOICES.
Thank you to Partick Thistle Football Club, The Scottish Football Supporters Association and Rumphi United for their support of our project.
As part of her final year project, microbiology undergraduate Paige Webber has developed a series of short films that support this collaboration and takes a closer look at the work the Macleod Group do, including a typical day and what motivates their research. Paige has been supervised by Dr Nicola Veitch from the School of Life Sciences.
3. The workings of a research facility
Paige has also created an animation that talks more about sleeping sickness, and gave us a bit of a sneak preview of the performance that we were working on with Surge.
5. Sleeping sickness: a tale of shape-shifting parasites
This project is funded by the ScotPEN Wellcome Engagement Award (Wellcome Project Number 217078/Z/19/Z)
Talk About Tsetses Project in Malawi
Talk About Tsetses project in Malawi
Annette MacLeod’s group was awarded funding by Wellcome-ScotPEN to take their successful Parasite Street Science project (https://tinyurl.com/ParasiteStreetScience) to Malawi in October 2022 to work in areas affected by African sleeping sickness, using street theatre as a route to engaging the public with their research.
The team travelled to Rumphi and Nkhotakota to work with a group of health promotion officers, medical staff, two professional performers from VOICES Malawi and four community participants who had previously been affected by African sleeping sickness. Our newly-developed Talk About Tsetses performance was created in rehearsals in Rumphi and toured to local villages, football and netball bonanazas and marketplaces in Rumphi and Nkhotakota over a period of two weeks.
We collaborated with dance troupes Lugo Cultural Team in Rumphi and Chiusi Kanada Dance Group and the Gule Wamkulu dancers in Nkhotakota, whose energy and skill attracted fantastic crowds.
Our activities were covered by local radio stations in Malawi and the programmes created will be made available to radio listening clubs to engage audiences in Q&A sessions and to continue the conversation about African Trypanosomiasis.
We worked with final year Pharmacology BSc (Hons) student at University of Glasgow, Tiarna Meehan, who produced a stop motion animation as part of her project: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuQLQ_Mq7u0
Please also check out:
Website: https://www.streetscience.info
Twitter: https://twitter.com/MWStreetScience
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/surgescotland/albums/72177720303224378
The UK team were overwhelmed by the warm welcome and support we received in Malawi and would like to thank the Malawi team for the opportunity to work with them on this project. We hope that this work will lead to more opportunities to work together on projects of this nature in the future.
A collaboration between the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology, University of Glasgow School of Life Sciences, Surge, Kamuzu University of Health Sciences, and Malawi VOICES.
With thanks to our funders: ScotPEN-Wellcome Trust Public Engagement Grant, Microbiologiy Society Education and Outreach Grant, MVLS Engagement with Research Fund, University of Glasgow Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology, Creative Scotland.
Thank you to the Directorates of Health and Social Services for Nkhotakota and Rumphi District Councils, Partick Thistle Football Club, The Scottish Football Supporters Association, Ross Corbett, Glasgow University Football Club and Bo’ness United Community Football Club for their support of our project.
Parasite Street Science x Partick Thistle
In August 2022, our microcosm of microbiology gave the Partick Thistle fans at Firhill Stadium a chance to get involved with learning the science behind the spread of infections and the role of antibodies within the body.
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With the team set to fly out to Malawi in the coming weeks, Saturday 6th August saw the group practice their performance in front of the Firhill crowd for the first time before they perform educationally at football matches in Malawi.
More news from Malawi coming soon!
Parasite Street Science at the Merchant City Street Festival 2021
The final show was presented at Surge Festival - part of Merchant City Festival - in July 2021 in Glasgow.
Video
Afterwards, Paige also produced a film that includes photos and footage from the show itself and interviews with the scientists and performers, which can be viewed below.
Images
By Professor Darren Monkton
More images, taken by Ingrid Mur, can be found on the following Flickr page.
Further Information
This project was funded by the Wellcome Institutional Strategic Support Fund via a grant from the MVLS Engagement with Research Fund and the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology and the Microbiology Society, and delivered in partnership with Surge, Professor Annette MacLeod, Dr Walt Adamson (IBAHCM), Dr Nicola Veitch (SoLS) and Dr Vickie Curtis (WCIP).
- For more about the work we do at the Wellcome Centre for Integrative Parasitology, visit our webpage.
- To find out more about sleeping sickness, check out our comic, which is based on the research of the MacLeod Group.