Support ASCUS
Welcome back to ASCUS!
We want to take a moment to share our COVID journey with you as we move into a new phase of development for ASCUS. Since the 18th of March 2020, our small team has been hit hard by COVID and the associated restrictions on our work. Over successive lockdowns, we have remained responsive and open where possible, while keeping the safety of our staff and members our top priority. Despite considerable financial strain, we are determined to continue to bring art and science together in new and exciting ways and in May 2021, we were finally able to re-open our doors to existing members.
We ran our first digital workshop across the UK, Art and Science on a Postcard, and were finally able to launch an ambitious hybrid programme of online and in-person exhibitions in 2021 for the postponed Edinburgh Science Festival: Syncrasy, Entanglements of Time and Tide and Catalysing Creativity. We are also excited to welcome new projects to our lab with artist Sonia Mehra Chawla’s The Rooted Sea, researcher Gerard Piper’s Workshop Fertility Research: Behind the Scenes and our new exploratory youth programme, Unearthing Micro Life.
2020 and 2021 have continued to present challenges and through all this we would like to thank you, our community, for continuing to check-in with us and for sharing how crossover working across art and science brings you much needed inspiration during what have been trying times. We would like to thank our lab members for sticking with us through the ups and downs of each lockdown, our broad community of artists and scientists who have joined us on our journey as we test out new digital programmes and workshops and our broader audiences who attended our very first hybrid programme for the 2021 Edinburgh Science Festival. Your ongoing support as we continue to envision new ways of working with and supporting interdisciplinary communities and ideas is vital. We would not still be here without it.
The Future
As we look to the future, we want to share with you a new approach to funding ASCUS. Despite our best efforts to maintain ASCUS as the thriving hub of art and science hybrid research in the UK that we want it to be, our core business has been fundamentally destabilised by COVID and we need your help to continue to support the work that we do on a day-to-day basis.
By becoming a supporting member of ASCUS you can help to ensure that we can continue to do what we do best – bringing art and science together and sharing it with the wider public.
Set up a monthly or one-time PayPal donation here:
Or become a monthly Patreon subscriber here:
Other ways you can support us are by using the lab, in-person and online! ASCUS Lab is OPEN for new projects and members, therefore if you have a project or an idea or simply want to do some creative/scientific exploration for yourself using our equipment then please get in touch! We can also offer remote one-to-one sessions with our lab manager, Keira for your home DIY lab projects.
The different ways you can access the lab are via our membership programme or through booking a one-off lab session. All information about these different options for you to be able to access our community lab space and facility, no matter what your background, are available to view here on our website.
