News Story

Tiff Leek is awarded a Social Microbe Residency

Jane Whild, Tuesday 28 Mar 2023

Congratulations to Tiff Leek, a member of the STEM Technical Services Team, on being awarded a Social Microbes Residency. Social Microbes is a new collaboration between Then Try This and Dr. Elze Hesse, funded by Elze’s UKRI Future Leaders Fellowship.

Tiff is a research software developer and animal computer interaction researcher, maker and artist. Her residency will be an exploration of local microbial life in the form of workshops, imagery, and a raku fired accessible ceramic relief wall mural. The mural will be of microbes and microbe colonies at various magnifications, and the landscape local to Wheal Martyn, showing the microbes that live in the soil in the local mining landscape, and providing information on how they work together. As well as a visual treat, this will provide a tactile picture for the vision impaired and a rubbing surface to allow visitors to make composite pictures of the various elements. You can find Tiff on Mastodon, Instagram and Twitter.

This is one of three Social Microbes residencies, with each resident based at a different collaborating host organisation in Cornwall. The host organisations are all very different to each other: Wheal Martyn – a museum based within two Victorian china clay works, Soul Farm– a food-justice orientated market garden farm, and Fish Factory – a community arts venue.

We’re looking forward to seeing Tiff’s mural and as well as the outputs from the other Social Microbes residencies.