Heart of the Heart - what are the issues?

What’s on offer?

An interactive, participatory poetry workshop exploring heart health.

What’s it about?

Attacks, arrests, angina, aneurysms, fibrillations, high blood pressure and stroke. Diseases of the heart, disease of the circulatory system. Diseases that are a leading cause of death associated with poor lifestyles, old age and a major concern for society. But few consider these diseases in younger people. Come and explore the amazing organ that is our heart. We’ll remind you of how it functions and how it develops after just a few weeks from your conception to beat over 2 billion times in your lifetime.

Sadly, it can go wrong. Defects of form, defects of rhythm, the consequences for some are minor, for others sadly lethal. Environment, infectious disease, and genetics can all contribute. Unfortunately, for many the causes are still unknown.

We’ll be asking you to listen to the voice of young people as they respond and express themselves about these diseases. With the help of the School of Life Science’s poet in residence, we’ll empower you to be similarly creative. We’ll demonstrate ECG measurements, enhancing with augmented and virtual reality demonstrations. We hope you can take some newfound wonder and knowledge for the physiology and societal concerns for the diseases, accepting an invitation to the following week’s Q&A with scientists actively involved in this research area.

Who’s leading the event?

Prof Kevin Moffatt

Open to

Open to all