Wellcome Collection - What's On in November

Booking for events opens at 11.00 on Friday 28 October.   You can book online with our ticketing system by following the links below, or you can call us on 020 7611 2222.

FREE EXHIBITION  Bedlam: the asylum and beyond UNTIL 15 JAN 2017 FREE | DROP IN 'Bedlam: the asylum and beyond' traces the rise and fall of the mental asylum by following the story of one such institution, Bethlem Royal Hospital in London, known in popular slang as Bedlam. The exhibition focuses on the diverse perspectives and lived experiences of individuals who inhabited the asylum or created alternatives to it – their voices have shaped the meaning of mental illness and the current landscape of mental health care. Pick up an audio companion, which brings together interviews, spoken word and other audio pieces developed by creative practitioners with lived experience of mental health issues.         All our exhibitions are free. Find out about entry at busy times. › Bedlam: the asylum and beyond – find out more Image: Madlove- A Designer Asylum. A project by Hannah Hull & The Vacuum Cleaner with designs by Benjamin Koslowski and James Christian. Alternative Asylums THURSDAY 10 NOV, 19.00-21.00 FREE | BOOK FROM 28 OCT What would an ideal asylum look like? Is there such a thing as a safe place to go mad? Come and discuss alternative places of safety including R D Laing’s controversial Kingsley Hall and the Belgian city of Geel’s unique model of psychiatric care. › Alternative Asylums – find out more Speech-to-text tour of 'Bedlam: the asylum and beyond' THURSDAY 17 NOV, 18.00-19.00 BOOK | WALKING TOUR Our Visitor Experience Assistant Elissavet will acquaint you with the lives and perspectives of individuals who inhabited the asylum or created alternatives to it on this speech-to-text tour. › STT 'Bedlam' tour – find out more Re:Creating Psychiatry THURSDAY 24 NOV, 19.00-20.30 FREE | DROP IN Join us for the second of two discussion events exploring issues in the contemporary mental health system. The focus for this conversation will be: 'State of Emergency: is there space for empathy in a time of crisis?' › Re:Creating Psychiatry – find out more 'Bedlam' blog series This blog series showcases many different voices and perspectives from people with lived experience of mental ill health and explores their ideas of personal asylum through sculpture, vlogging, poetry and more. › 'Bedlam' blog series – find out more   COMING SOON Symposium: Diagnosing Diagnosis SATURDAY 10 DEC, 10.30-17.30 £18/15  | BOOK FROM OCT 28 How helpful are medical labels when it comes to mental health? How do we decide what are ordinary responses to human experience and what counts as a disorder? Is an objective notion of mental illness even possible? And who gets to decide who should carry a psychiatric label – might self-diagnosis be the future? Join us for a full day of in-depth discussions exploring the current psychiatric diagnosis debate, the social function of diagnosis beyond the laboratory and the NHS, and a variety of historical, artistic and cultural approaches to thinking about experiences of mental ill health. The ticket price includes lunch and refreshments. › Diagnosing Diagnosis – find out more   FRIDAY LATE SPECTACULAR Friday Late Spectacular: Body Language FRIDAY 4 NOV, 19.00-23.00 FREE | BOOK FOR TALKS FROM 28 OCT  If your body could speak, what would it say? From British Sign Language to dance as activism, interaction with robots to political posturing, what do languages of the body reveal or conceal about the experience of inhabiting one? Join us for an evening of embodied exploration and discover how your body talks. This is a special late-night event with a bar running all night. The building might be busy and space is limited, so entry is not guaranteed. Performance: A new performance exploring public address from artist Josh Bitelli. Talks: 'Speaking Without Words' with autism expert Phoebe Caldwell | 'Fat Activism' with author and activist Charlotte Cooper | 'Body Language and Rhetoric' with physiologist Harry Witchel. Activities: Zine workshop: delve into the Wellcome Library archives with Collective Creativity artists to create new visual languages of the body | Social robotics: discover the research behind human–robot interactions | 'Body to Brain': watch how the brain responds to everything from high fives to face palms. All pre-booked talks will be British Sign Language-interpreted. › Friday Late Spectacular – find out more   YOUTH PROGRAMME Print-making and poster design workshops SATURDAY 26 NOV, 14.00-17.00 FREE | DROP IN Drop by to learn a variety of print-making techniques and use these to create your own campaign posters inspired by our exhibition 'Bedlam: the asylum and beyond'. › Saturday Studio – find out more   FREE EVENTS Packed Lunch: Monkey Microbiomes WEDNESDAY 9 NOV, 13.00-14.00 FREE | FIRST COME, FIRST SEATED What might studying the bacteria in primates’ guts mean for future human health? Catie Williams’s research looks for patterns in the composition of gut bacteria in related primate species and investigates the differences. Speaker Catie Williams, biologist and PhD candidate, University College London. › Packed Lunch – find out more Books as Bodies, Bodies as Books THURSDAY 17 NOV, 18.00-19.00 TICKETED | BOOK FROM 28 OCT This specially created event for the Wellcome Library by artist and lecturer Amanda Couch, will explore books as bodies and bodies as books – folds as metaphors of digestion, reading as rumination, palimpsests as skin and livers as tablets – in a unique feast for the mind. Speaker Amanda Couch, artist, researcher and senior lecturer › Books as Bodies – find out more   COMING SOON – MAKING NATURE: HOW WE SEE ANIMALS Making Nature: How we see animals 1 DEC 2016-21 MAY 2017 FREE | DROP IN The question of how humans relate to other animals has captivated philosophers, anthropologists, ethicists and artists for centuries. This exhibition will bring together over 100 objects from literature, film, taxidermy and photography to examine the historical origins of our ideas about other animals and the consequences of these for ourselves and our planet. › Making Nature – find out more   BOOKS This Way Madness Lies: The asylum and beyond AVAILABLE NOW RRP £24.95 Mike Jay explores the evolution of the asylum and attitudes to mental distress and its treatment. From the madhouse to the lunatic asylum, from the mental hospital to the world at large, it features illustrations from Wellcome's exceptional holdings and the Bethlem Royal Hospital’s archive. Published by Thames & Hudson and Wellcome Collection to accompany 'Bedlam: the asylum and beyond'. › This Way Madness Lies – find out more In Therapy: How conversations with psychotherapists really work AVAILABLE FROM 3 NOV  RRP £8.99 An insightful, honest account of the process of therapy from bestselling author Susie Orbach. Drawing on 40 years of experience, she reveals what she thinks and feels about the people who seek her help, through five dramatised case studies. An essential read for anyone curious about therapy.  Published by Wellcome Collection. › In Therapy – find out more Animal Vegetable Mineral – Organising Nature: A picture album AVAILABLE FROM 1 DEC RRP £12.99 'Animal Vegetable Mineral' celebrates the beauty and strangeness of the ‘infographics’, charts and ordering systems used to classify and understand nature in the 18th and 19th centuries, from taxonomy diagrams to distribution maps and colour dictionaries. With an introduction by Tim Dee.  Published by Wellcome Collection to accompany 'Making Nature'. › Animal Vegetable Mineral – find out more  ONLINE Sleep Stories Explore the digital quilt made by our visitors to tie in with our 'States of Mind' exhibition (now closed). We collected stories of what happens when people are asleep and the best ones were sewn into a quilt by our visitors. The quilt can now be viewed online along with these sometimes strange, sometimes funny stories. › Sleep Stories – find out more   BEYOND WELLCOME Alicja Kwade: 'Medium Median' UNTIL 25 JUNE 2017 FREE | WHITECHAPEL GALLERY Berlin-based artist Alicja Kwade's new installation presents astronomical data exploring our position in the universe.     Kwade’s work intervenes in our understanding of time. From visualising astronomical data to manipulating common objects, Kwade challenges conventional scientific perceptions of the world and space. › 'Medium Median' – find out more Teeth Show SUNDAY 20 NOV, 18.00 £7.50 | UGLY DUCK, TANNER STREET Starting with teeth as a metaphor for roots, 'Teeth Show' invites the audience on a poetic, medical, bittersweet and personal journey through surreal stories, original sound and film. Performance and visual artist Natasha Davis will be exploring our relationship with our teeth as part of a major new work.       › Teeth Show – find out more Museum of the Normal THURSDAY 24 NOV, 18.00-21.00 FREE, SIGN UP | BARTS PATHOLOGY MUSEUM Explore the history of being normal in this free drop-in late at Barts Pathology Museum. Expect lost emotions, historical tests, themed refreshments, arts, talks and more. › Museum of the Normal – find out more Wildlife Photographer of the Year  UNTIL 10 SEP 2017 TICKETED, FREE FOR MEMBERS, PATRONS AND CHILDREN UNDER 4 | NHM The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition tells the story of Earth’s wildlife through 100 award-winning images from the world’s best wildlife photographers. Associate sponsor: DONG Energy. › Wildlife Photographer – find out more