Events / Projects

The Philosophy of Synaesthesia

This activity explored some of the philosophical questions raised by synaesthesia: a phenomenon in which seemingly unrelated sensory experiences become merged together. The audience was encouraged to engage through a game called Colour Articulate. Volunteers were be tasked with describing a colour to the audience without saying the name of the colour, or describing objects of that colour, which got the audience interacting directly with philosophical concepts. There was a great turnout and everyone was super engaged. It was lovely to see such a large group getting stuck in with philosophy!

The Meaning Behind Colours in Flags

In this activity, we got the audience to question the role of colours, and how they are used in flags and political settings. Specifically how the colours in flags are used to convey certain ideologies and the symbolism colours carry. We presented the audience with a series of flags and asked them what they thought the colours represented, before asking them to design a flag of their own. We were impressed by how knowledable people were about flags and how creative they were with their designs!

The Functions of Colour

This activity focused on the difference between the function and aesthetic value of colour. In animals, colour clearly has a survival function, but for humans there is also aesthetic value, showing a separate way that human beings understand colour aside from being functional. This was a great activity which encouraged in depth discussion of philosophy and engage with Sheffield's philosophical community. It was a joy to explore the function of colour in society and how we utilise colour in day to day life. 

Colour Prejudice

This activity explored how we delegate environmental protection on the basis of the visual appeal, regardless of importance or practicality. The audience was presented with different environments and had to rank which they would most want to protect, to highlight the role of colour and aesthetics in deciding what's important to us. We then asked how they would view the same environments if they were stripped of colour. The audience engaged really well and it was great to see so many people getting involved with philosophical discussion!

Sound and Vision

This activity explored our synthesis of colour, music and philosophy. The audience was presented with a philosophical idea, and an associated song. They then raised different coloured cards depending on which colour they felt reflected the idea or song the best. It was lovely to end the evening with music, eliciting a similar response from the audience.

Music and Religion:

In the first activity, we spoke about the relationship between Pagans and plants via music. We engaged with the students by giving them drawing activities and speaking to them in small groups to draw out philosophical discussions from their drawings.

Solar and Lunar Calendars: 

Second, we ran an activity on solar and lunar calendars to get the students thinking about the systems that we base our year on. By comparing different kinds of calendars and asking the children to make their own, we questioned what was most important for us to track throughout the year and if we should think about it differently.

Religious Festivals:

In this activity, we introduced the students to Eid, Vesak, and Diwali, getting them to focus on the similarities between them. We then asked them to create their own festival, considering which elements they would choose to include that overlapped with the festivals we looked at and which would be new.

The Lunar New Year:

In the final activity, we discussed each of the Chinese zodiac animals. We focused on which attributes the children believed were associated with each animal and then compared that to the actual attributes and asked the children to see if they agreed with that or not, especially focusing on if they agreed with attributes of the animal assigned to their birth year.

Reflections:

All the groups engaged really well with the activities and discussions we presented them with. They particularly enjoyed the interactive aspects including the drawings, worksheets, and discussions. We allowed each group to shape our presentation based on what they were most engaged with, meaning each workshop was unique.