We caught up with third year Medical Genetics student Evie Walker to hear more about her creative dissertation project (video below) which employs storytelling, stop-motion, and puppetry to teach us more about the wonderful world of bees!
I am someone who enjoys the sillier things in life and I'm afraid nothing particularly highbrow stirred my initial interest in bees. It was a startling answer to a pub quiz question: they have 5 eyes. How many animals can you think of with an odd number of eyeballs? I had to know more. Where are they located? Are they compound eyes like on a fly? What is the benefit of having so many - we get along with just two, isn't it rather conceited of them to want more? That led me down the rabbit hole of researching different bee species. I vaguely knew there were different types of bees (I had written a little about a species of bumblebee in one of my assessments in my first year), but I thought all bees made honey, lived in honeycomb hives and courteously allowed humans to pilfer their produce and stick it in jars. If you have Wi-Fi and half a minute, check out the colours of the orchid bee, the freaky chompers of Wallace's giant bee or the utter adorableness of the teddy bear bee.
When I chose my dissertation project - Engaging the public with science - I found I would be working with the Queen Mary initiative, BioCapture, which is a website created by students to give information about the importance of biodiversity in Tower Hamlets. Whilst scrolling through the website I came upon the section called The Beehive and I very quickly knew what I wanted to do my dissertation on. I decided to make a video I hoped would pique the viewers' interest in the creatures, just as mine had been, and help them understand why they are so important to us and how we can help.
I wanted to make the video as interesting as I could and something that would appeal to people from all sorts of backgrounds. I love the short, animated videos from the YouTube channels TED-Ed and Kurzgesagt and I really believe scientific information should be made accessible and, wherever possible, fun for the public. I decided to go with a more "practical effects" approach. When I was little, I used to make stop motion videos in our garage with a pink polka dot iPad. I occasionally used it to make assignments for school and it's funny that things have come full circle. I’m doing the same thing in university that I did when I was nine!
After doing the research and writing the script, I looked at each section I had written and tried to figure out the most interesting way I could convey the information. This involved racking my brains for all the random crafts I had taught children as a nursery practitioner. My mother is also an artist, this gives you excellent access to some of the more random arts and crafts supplies:
"I need to paint a roman backdrop"
"Acrylics or watercolours?"
"This looks dull, do you have any glitter?"
"What colour? Large or small? Liquid or flecks?"
"I have no idea how to make a bumblebee"
"I'll call my friend, the felter, and she'll make you a broach so realistic it will freak people out". Yes, the felt bee really does freak people out.
I am also interested in history. As soon as I had decided on the topic for my dissertation, I did a deep dive into our history with bees. And there is TONNES. The trouble was deciding how much to include. So many of the things we take for granted today were a massive part of people's livelihoods in the past. In Norway people even used to make their beehives look like little houses to encourage bees to move in. I could have talked about the Romans and their relationships with bees for ages. They had so many weird laws around them. It seems the Romans were very confused on how to own bees. It's not like a cow you can shove in a barn; they can just fly away. It's not like a bird you can chain and call "Polly"; you'd run out of chains., you'd run out of names for that matter. As soon as a bee flew out of your hive, it no longer belonged to you.
Probably the biggest challenge was the black background. I knew we needed one that our hands could go behind, to change sets and animate the puppets. But I had no idea of how to construct one big enough to film with. Practically everything I made used recycled cardboard, but we had nothing big enough to hide a person behind. As was the theme with the project, my mother held the solution with portable partitions to hang paintings on for exhibitions. I pinned a ream of black fabric onto it and voila: a backdrop! However, my mum is an abstract painter and some of her stuff is MASSIVE. To accommodate this, the partitions are 6 meters long, and I needed 2 so the living room was completely unusable for days. My family was very patient with me, but I did scramble to get it done as fast as possible before anyone could get too peeved.
When I first had the idea, I thought it may be too odd for a dissertation but I was pleasantly surprised by the incredible support and encouragement from my academic advisers! Turns out Dr David Hone is very interested in stop motion animation! We talked about Phil Tippett's work and how differently Jurassic Park would have turned out if his "go motion" had been used instead. Dr Clara Montgomery's brain was a fabulous one to pick for bee conservation information. Dr Sally Faulkner was an invaluable help for navigating the hitherto unknown world of copyright claims (I mostly avoided it by making everything myself, but that fabulous music score by Peer Gynt was sourced copyright free - and definitely for the best as I can barely play the triangle). The whole of the student BioCapture team were such a blessing too. Aliya Garraway in particular was so incredibly kind and helpful. As a semi-technophobe, I could not figure out how to upload the video at all. She also did some wizardry to sharpen the audio that I could never have done on my own.
That we can help them. I find that so many well-meaning resources about ecological conservation can leave the viewer feeling terribly gloomy and impotent to help. I remember in primary school, the first time we learnt about climate change and how terrible it all was, all of us left the lesson with a slight existential crisis. I was determined I would make something that would encourage my audience, not dishearten them. It was important to me to show that, even with simple steps, all of us can aid these amazing creatures.