Feel It Festival: Exploring pa

This Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research and the Life of Breath festival will bring together researchers, artists and members of the public to debate and explore University of Bristol research on the experience of being human; in particular pain and breathlessness.

The weekend-long Feel It Festival will see pain, in all its forms, explored through performing arts, debated in talks and panels and discussed in creative workshops where participants and members of the audience will have the chance to probe, question and feed into the University of Bristol research being carried out into human pain and breathlessness.

The festival will take place in Circomedia’s St Paul’s Church, just off Portland Square. Circomedia is not just as a beautiful venue, but is also an orgainsation with over 15 years of experience in physical theatre.

What is pain and why breathlessness?

Pain is a prevalent part of human experience but it is defined in many different ways. Our understanding of pain includes the breadth of experiences from physical pain to feelings of distress. The impacts may be short or long term; they may be positive or negative; they may vary according to age, experience and culture; and they may affect behaviour, cognition, spiritual beliefs and the physical body.

Breathlessness, one of the key areas identified to be explored through the festival, is not usually experienced as “painful” but it does cause severe distress and discomfort and changes the life of the person experiencing it. Does it count as pain? How would you define pain? We are interested in all of the many ways of describing these experiences.

Further information

Download the:

• Feel It Festival at a glance (png)
• Festival poster (PDF)
• Full programme (6MB, PDF)

This project is a collaboration between the Elizabeth Blackwell Institute for Health Research, the Life of Breath project and the Centre for Public Engagement and is made possible through the generous support of the Wellcome Trust.