In September, Bow Arts’ artist educators and Learning team visited the Person-Environment-Activity Research Laboratory (PEARL) at UCL in Barking & Dagenham for an inspiring creative workshop led by Miyuki Kasahara.
The day began with a tour of the building. Bow Arts’ artist educators were led through life-sized environments used to test the reactions of participants in UCL Pearl’s research into urban design. Physical movements, such as eye motions, heart rate, skin responses and brain activity are all possible measures to collect data.
Inside the laboratory’s main hangar, thousands of holes in the wall are used to control the sound inside the space; the overhead lighting can be programmed with thousands of possibilities, from sunlight in Brazil, or in London, to the light of the stars. Working across disciplines with musicians, artists, and scientists, the controlled conditions of the hangar provide new possibilities for measuring how different individuals experience the range of sensory stimuli across different environments, picking up the differences in how humans attune to the world around them.
After the tour, artist educator Miyuki spoke about a recent visit to UCL Pearl with 11 SEND students from St Peter’s RC Primary School. In a workshop after the tour, they crafted their ideal sensory environments using materials from an East London based scrap store.
As a learning exercise and professional development session, Miyuki then led the artist educators, Bow Arts staff, and PEARL team through the same creative workshop, asking the artist educators to engage and experiment with building and sculpture, as well as consider the sensory and immersive potentials of imagined spaces.
As artists and educators, it was a joy to explore the possibilities at the intersection between the arts, engineering and the sciences. PEARL’s research provides fantastic concrete examples of how the arts contribute to bettering our lives, which our team hopes to pass along to the young people we work alongside.
“How magical! I feel so inspired after visiting UCL Pearl and was overjoyed to reflect on that experience afterwards with Miyuki. Creative communication is beautiful”
Artist Educator
Find out more about PEARL, or get in touch with Bow Arts Learning via learning@bowarts.com