Last February, Kat Sanders and I launched Anatomy Nights.
The concept had actually been dreamt up at a conference dinner a few months before. There is a big push for public engagement with science. There were currently a few people around the UK doing odd things as festivals but no big, coordinated effort. Rather than asking people to come to the University open days to engage with us, could we really take anatomy to them?
On February 14th 2018 we had 5 different UK venues sold out with anatomists from the local medical schools taking the public through an animal heart dissection in pubs (and a school). It was proof that the public wanted to know more about their bodies and, from the data we collected, it was clear that this method worked; people left knowing more about their bodies. Along the way we raised nearly £1000 for the British Heart Foundation.
We repeated the success in October with animal brain dissections.
Amanda Meyer is currently attending ANZACA (The Australian and New Zealand Association of Clinical Anatomists). At the end of her talk yesterday she put up a slide Kat had prepared asking if they wanted to join in with Anatomy Nights in 2019.
Twitter lit up!
We’ve had dozens of people joining us wanting to be involved, not just from Australia and New Zealand but from Indiana, Philadelphia, across the whole world. A push for UK and Europe is planned for next week.
2019 looks to be an interesting year.
anatomyfundamentals.com 