Futurecity and MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) are pleased to announce 30 Bird and public works as LMB Artist-in-Residence starting in April 2015 on Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC). They are a collaborative team made up of a Cambridge based performance company led by Mehrdad Seyf (30 Bird) and a participatory art and architecture practice led by Torange Khonsari (public works).

The LMB is one of the world’s leading research institutes, whose scientists are studying biology on a tiny scale to understand fundamental biological processes and diseases. With the aim to inspire new perspectives and understanding of LMB’s research the residency will engage with LMB scientists, staff, and the general public over a period of 12 months.

“We were attracted to this residency because it provided us with the opportunity to bring together art and science in an innovative and interesting way, challenging the more traditional notions of public art”, said Mehrdad Seyf.

He added “The research at the LMB involves work at the minutest detail, with the aim of extracting information that influences life on earth on an epic scale. It is the marriage of these two, the minute and the epic, the scientific research deep within organisms and its physical and social consequences that make the research at the LMB work so exciting to us."

The LMB residency is the first in a new Artist-in-Residence programme that forms part of the Cambridge Biomedical Campus (CBC) Public Art Programme.The Programme will bring cultural projects to CBC, soon to be home to 17,000 workers across a 140-acre ‘medical city’. It is funded by Countryside Properties and Liberty Property Trust.

“The ambition for the CBC Public Art Programme is to embed the very best creative arts practice throughout CBC as a world leading biomedical campus. A combination of public realm projects alongside artist-in-residence commissions will demonstrate the impact and value created through collaboration between the art, design, science and healthcare”, said Andy Robinson, director at Futurecity.

30 Bird is an award winning performance company based in Cambridge. Each one of their projects is unique – no one project taking the same form as another – and often using the detail of autobiographical stories to explore global issues pertinent to contemporary society. Their roots lie in visual theatre with the company’s early work presented at venues such as the Riverside Studios, Lyric Hammersmith, Birmingham Rep, The Traverse Edinburgh, Cambridge Junction and Warwick Arts Centre. In recent years their practice has shifted to creating outdoor, site-specific, multi-disciplinary and interactive performance projects that create unique experiences for audiences. They create multi-disciplinary performance projects, often designed for non-theatrical spaces and toured nationally and internationally to theatres, festivals, cinemas and sometimes across whole cities. They want audiences to have a direct relationship with their work; to engage, to participate and to be surprised.

public works are an art and architecture practice working within and towards public space. All public works projects address the question how the public realm is shaped by its various users and how existing dynamics can inform further proposals. Their focus is the production and extension of a particular public space through participation and collaborations. Projects span across different scales and address the relation between the informal and formal aspects of a site.

Their work produces social, architectural and discursive spaces. Outputs include socio-spatial and physical structures, public events and publications.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) is one of the birthplaces of modern molecular biology and one of the world’s leading research institutes. LMB scientists are working to advance the understanding of biological processes at the molecular level – with the goal of using this information to understand the workings of complex systems, such as the immune system and the brain, and solve key problems in human health and disease such as cancer, asthma and Alzheimer’s disease.

Discoveries and inventions developed at the LMB, for example DNA sequencing and methods to determine the structure of proteins, have revolutionised all areas of biology. LMB scientists are also encouraged to exploit their discoveries – through patents, licensing and business start-ups – helping to advance medical research and improve the UK’s economic competitiveness. To date, work carried out by LMB scientists has attracted 10 Nobel prizes, dozens of Royal Society awards and numerous other scientific honours.