Dear friends and colleagues,

Thanks for reading our April-at-the-turn-of-May newsletter. Ever the topical organisation, we've made sure to include some eco-friendly news. Fortunately for someone having to compile a newsletter to the tune of current events, the Knowledge Quarter provides. Among our membership we have the world's first architecture practice to have its sustainability targets officially approved, a Local Authority with progressive policies to tackle London's air pollution and our Exhibition of the Month explores the consequences of poor air quality on our health.       

Many thanks for your continued support and interest. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter @KQ_London and Facebook for the latest news and announcements, and tune into our instagram, which our amazing partners curate each week.

With best wishes, 

Knowledge Quarter Team

The Knowledge Quarter’s 2019 conference The Future of Knowledge: Think Better. Think Together. will explore real-world strategies for democratising, decolonising, demystifying and disseminating knowledge. With speakers, panels and workshops from science, technology, the media, politics, arts and culture, this conference provides a unique opportunity for Knowledge Quarter partners and friends to collaborate and educate, forging lasting connections to push towards a bright future for knowledge.

Get your earlybird ticket here.

Bennetts Associates has become the first architects in the world to have Science Based Targets approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative (SBTi). The practice is also the first to commit to the UN’s Climate Neutral Now campaign.

Find out more about Bennetts Associates 2020 targets.

The Westminster Kingsway College Supported Internship Programme is a work-based alternative provision for young people aged 16-25 with Special Educational Needs and/or Mental Health Needs. Knowledge Quarter partners are encouraged to host students, like young Otis here, and engage in this exciting and rewarding project.

Find out how to get involved

Join us on 9 May for a KQ Roundtable on Neurodiversity

Edvard Munch: Love and Angst

11 June at the British Museum, 9:00 -10:00

You may know ‘The Scream’ but do you know who painted it? Meet Edvard Munch, Norway’s answer to Vincent van Gogh as the British Museum showcases the largest exhibition of his prints in the UK for 45 years (including ‘The Scream’ lithograph).

Knowledge Quarter staff and friends are welcome to join our private breakfast view of Edvard Munch: Love and Angst. Enjoy free out-of-hours access to the exhibition.

Find out more and book your ticket.

The Reading Agency is looking for an ambitious and experienced strategic manager to head up its children and young people’s team. Join a national charity as it continues to develop and deliver its vision to champion children and young people’s reading.

Salary: £42,000 p/a
Closes: 6 May

19 April-20 June, UCL Bloomsbury Theatre

Experience cutting-edge research from one of the world’s leading universities, brought to life onstage by artists, dancers, opera singers and stand-up comedians.

£5 tickets available for KQ staff when you quote the code ‘NEIGHBOUR’.

FInd out more and book your tickets here

Catch Your Breath
Royal College of Physicians

The Ultra Low Emission Zone came into force earlier this month. The Royal College of Physicians (RCP), which sits on the perimeter of the zone, is welcoming the anticipated gusts of clean air with an exhibition on breathing. Once you've walked the length of Euston Road and inhaled all it has to offer, there's no more pertinent and inspiring a pit stop you can make right now than to pop into the RCP.

The story of our understanding of, and relationship to, the breath and breathing, as told here in many wonderful artefacts, is a long and fascinating one. Ancient Greek natural philosophers bestowed divine properties on the ‘pneuma’, Yogis practised pranayama techniques of breathing control (which the Edwardians would later import to Britain as a means of alleviating asthma) and Christians believed God had breathed life into the first man. Equally fascinating are displays devoted to the Romantic-era view of consumption as a trendy disease, the enduring theory of miasma and twentieth-century advancements in inhalers and mass radiographic screenings for Tuberculosis and cancer. Audio clips of interviews from the RCP’s archives give listeners intimate access to the modern history of respiratory diseases and treatments; you can hear Dame Margaret Turner-Warwick recount her battle with TB, and many other sufferers of breathlessness describe personal experiences of being diagnosed, living with their conditions and sudden attacks.

You’ll find yourself unnaturally conscious of your breathing as monaural stethoscopes, sputum pots and nebulizers pass before your eyes. And your chest might not be the only thing tightening. One of the more primitive methods for clearing the lungs was an enema, and the RCP has a range of medieval-looking tools on display. Blowing smoke up one's backside was not just for court sycophants; eighteenth century physicians believed inserting a pair of bellows into the rectum of a drowned victim and inflating them with smoke would clear the lungs of water and impurities. Smoke, inhaled, as a means of promoting lung health features prominently in the displays in the shape of smoking doctors, malign advertising and even ‘asthma cigarettes’. In combatting the pseudoscience, the RCP delves into its 500-year history, recalling how in 1962 the college released the first report to link smoking and lung cancer. 

For all the advancements in medical science chronicled in Catch Your Breath, the battle is by no means won. Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) is thought to affect 3.7 million people in the UK, and with air quality a critical problem facing Londoners, there is no timelier an exhibition anywhere else in the capital.

The exhibition is part of the Life of Breath project, funded by the Wellcome Trust. RCP is running a programme of supplementary events including an inspiring performance from a choir of singers suffering from a range of respiratory conditions and a special Late on 2 May.

Join the Knowledge Quarter Private Tour of Catch Your Breath at the Royal College of Physicians, Wednesday 29 May, 8:45-9:45

MORE:

- Read more on the RCP blog
- Camden Council have published their Clean Air Action Plan 2019-2022

Until 20 September 2019
Mon-Fri, 9:00-17:00

Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrews Place, NW1 4LE