Second and Third Year creative writing and screenwriting students (above with lecturer Margaret Leclere) were treated to a day in London last week to see the STATES OF MIND exhibition at The Welcome Trust. The exhibition explores phenomena such as somnambulism, synaesthesia, and disorders of memory and consciousness, and examines  ideas around the nature of consciousness, and in particular what can happen when our typical conscious experience is interrupted, damaged or undermined, from UFO sightings, to murder committed during sleepwalking, to The Cabinet of Dr Caligari…

We also explored their permanent collection which features art and artefacts, antique medical models, mummies, shrunken heads and other fascinating curiosities. Afterwards, students dispersed to The National Galleries, The British Library and the Southbank. Some of us explored the new Waterstone’s in Tottenham Court Road which also operates as a work station environment, as well as a bookshop. There’s a bar in the basement, a coffee shop on the top floor and work stations on all levels for visitors to work on their business briefings, novels or poems… A regular calendar of events is also a feature of the shop, not necessarily tethered to a book launch, so, for example, some creative writing students were advertising their evening of readings. Maybe we can do something similar, somewhere, soon! PH