The real Big Bang

The challenge for the science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics (STEAM) sectors isn’t to make room for creativity. Each of these disciplines is overflowing with it – producing discoveries, creations and inventions that regularly shape how we see ourselves and the world around us. 

The ongoing challenge for, and raison d'etre of, UNBOXED 2022 is to help remove perceptual barriers surrounding the subjects and to demonstrate, especially to young people, that STEAM subjects are a welcoming home for a thriving imagination.

Science, to draw from my own experience, is at its most captivating when it harnesses that fundamental creative spirit to tell larger stories about the connections we have to everything around us: our nature and wildlife, our place in the cosmos, and our relationship to one another. 

When communicated artfully – perhaps through the spectacle of technology – our differences and disagreements fall away and the story of our shared human experience emerges. 

This is the real Big Bang. This sense of human commonality through science has had an enormous impact on me, helping to kickstart my own fascination with the subject and the places it can take us.

About Us

This message from About Us* will open UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK next month. Using science, tech and storytelling to share a message about connection and community, it is the first of 10 major commissions taking place across the UK in 2022 as part of the UNBOXED programme.

Created by 59 Productions, one of the creative and technological forces behind the London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony, along with Stemettes and The Poetry Society, About Us embodies this message throughout a free, open-air event, which combines live performances and multimedia installations to celebrate the entire history of the universe.

It features an original score by Nitin Sawhney and incorporates winning entries from a nationwide school poetry and Scratch animation competition on the theme of ‘connectivity and the universe’. 

The communities hosting About Us are an integral part of the project. During the day, pop-up multimedia installations will showcase the boundless creativity of local children and young people – with poems and Scratch animations created from 50 school workshops that took place in the five areas the project will be visiting. 

Video portraits have been created to highlight local people from each area; these contributions form part of the digital installations accompanying the live shows. Every performance of About Us features local choirs from that location, starting with the Paisley Philharmonic Choir, the City of Glasgow Chorus and Strathclyde University Chamber Choir. 

A story for right now

The messages running through About Us are prominent in all the 10 UNBOXED commissions. Through these experiences, we’re encouraging participants to think about their place in the universe, and how they’re part of a much larger story that started long before any of us were born. 

This story isn’t just about where we’ve been, but where we’re all going. It invites us to look at ourselves, our communities, our environment, the way we live, work, play and treat one another. It’s a story which, we hope, makes the case that working together creatively, across divergent sectors and different ways of thinking, can produce not just spectacular events and experiences, but solutions to some of the world’s most challenging problems. 

Through our 10 projects, we want to break down preconceptions of different sectors, and the types of people who work within them. By encouraging partnerships across all fields of STEAM and innovative creative approaches, we believe we can demystify individual disciplines and develop new avenues for engagement and better public understanding.

About Us itself has been developed based on these principles of cross-collaboration, working with The Poetry Society, which champions poetry for all ages, and Stemettes, an award-winning social enterprise working to engage, inform and connect the next generation of women and non-binary people into STEM. 

Leap into wonder

The invitation for everyone to experience UNBOXED – in person, on TV, on radio and online – is open from March to October. It’s our hope that these 10 commissions will create a legacy of curiosity, enthusiasm and engagement across all parts of STEAM – while showcasing the incredible creativity that can be found within each sector.

It all starts in Paisley (with a Big Bang), then About Us moves on to Derry–Londonderry, Caernarfon, Luton and Hull. And if you can’t make any of those locations, I’d encourage you to learn more about our other nine commissions taking place across England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. I hope you can join us.

Dr Maggie Aderin-Pocock MBE is a space scientist and science communicator. 

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*‘About Us’ opens at Paisley Abbey in Paisley, Scotland from 1 – 6 March 2022.

This article, sponsored and contributed by UNBOXED, is part of a series of articles to showcase the value of creativity and what creativity means.