PRESS RELEASE
25th January 2016
A family day out at the Extreme Weather Event, The Forum, University of Exeter, 5th
March, 2016.
WAM -Weather Art and Music, an award-winning Special Interest Group of the Royal
Meteorological Society, is to hold its next event in Exeter. It will be a diverse day of
exploration and interaction for all ages, and an evening of entertainment and discussion.
The Extreme Weather Event will look at our experience of extreme weather in Devon, and
how it fits into a pattern of changing climate.
Prof Liz Bentley, Chief Executive of the Royal Meteorological Society, who will be taking
part in the event said: ‘I’m delighted to be able to participate in this fantastic
multidisciplinary event. The Royal Meteorological Society’s Weather, Art and Music group
will host a fun packed day on Extreme Weather and Climate. This event will capture the
many faces of the weather – its power, its beauty, its occasional absurdity and its fragility in
the face of human activity.’
Tickets are now on sale for the evening event called A Question of Extremes, which will
feature Helen Czerski and Prof Dame Julia Slingo, Chief Scientist of the Met Office. Physicist
Helen Czerski is well known for her science programmes on BBC. The first half of the
evening will feature Helen and her guest, world-leading climate scientist Dr Peter Stott from
the Met Office. Helen and Peter will take our audience on an entertaining and informative
journey around the globe to look at extreme weather and its connection to climate change.
The second half of the evening will feature Climate Change Question Time, with its highly
interactive format involving questions from the audience. The discussion will be chaired by
WAM founding member Prof Paul Hardaker, Chief Executive of the Institute of Physics, and
Helen will be joined on the panel by Julia and another world-leading expert on climate
change, Prof Peter Cox of the University of Exeter.
Helen Czerski said, “If you look at a painting or read a story, the weather is always there in
the background, but no-one ever comments on it. It’s often just seen as a sort of wallpaper,
stuck on the ceiling of our lives. But we live in the weather, and here in Britain we’re in a
fantastic position on the globe to appreciate the richness that the atmosphere has to
offer. I’m really excited about the WAM festival, because every perspective has something
to add to our experience of the weather, and giving art and music a place alongside the
scientific discussions shows us those connections.”
Our free event during the day, called Extreme Weather and You, will feature talks from
leading scientists, workshops with plenty of opportunities to get involved in discussions on
extreme weather in our community. The Met Office choir will be entertaining visitors during
the lunchbreak. There will be a science fair for the whole family, where visitors can explore
key ideas in weather and climate science in a fun way. And to cap it all off, we are offering
our audience a unique opportunity to take part in printmaking workshops led by Exeter's
outstanding Double Elephant Print Workshop. With the help of Double Elephant's
experienced workshop leaders, memories of extreme weather and thoughts about climate
change and our future will be transformed into a unique picture of our community
experience of extreme weather.
Exeter is a hot bed of weather and climate research with both the Met Office and a world
leading University based in the city. Locally based experts involved in the event include
Peter Stott, Richard Betts, Peter Cox, Mat Collins, Stuart Barr, Robert Dunn, Felicity Liggins
and Ewan Woodley. Early career scientists from the Met Office and the University of Exeter
will also be there to facilitate the workshops and give an insight into life on the shop floor of
predicting the weather and climate.
WAM - Weather, Art and Music is an initiative founded by musician and artist Pierrette
Thomet Stott together with her husband, climate scientist Dr Peter Stott of the Met Office,
Prof Paul Hardaker of the Institute of Physics, and a group of committed volunteers from the
scientific and arts community. Since its foundation in 2011, it has held a series of successful
events including the first, full weekend WAM Festival in Reading in 2012, a collaboration
with Progress Theatre around the Met Office -commissioned play ' Darwin and Fitzroy', and
a series of events at the Amateur Meteorologists’ conference of the Royal Meteorological
Society. In 2015 WAM received the Outreach and Communication Award of the European
Meteorological Society, achieving international recognition for its innovative approach to
communicating weather and climate science to a wider public
Pierrette Thomet Stott said “WAM started as a big experiment - bring weather and climate
science together with the arts and see what happens. Science and the arts have a lot to say to
each other, and we've had some very exciting results in the past, including a whole
exhibition of specially commissioned artwork inspired by the weather, and new music
commissions.”
A key feature of the Extreme Weather Event at the University of Exeter on 5 March this year
is the chance for participants to get involved themselves, in interactive science activities,
workshops, and question and answer sessions.
As Pierrette Thomet Stott points out, “We're trying to find more engaging and more positive
ways of talking about climate change - after all, this is something we need to talk about
because it affects our local community. And for this event, we're very excited to be able to
bring our community together with the world-leading weather and climate science
community that calls Exeter home. It's a great opportunity to get a direct conversation
started about one of the great challenges of our time."
Call WAM Director Pierrette Thomet Stott on 07795 098556 for more information. The full
programme and list of speakers is available from the WAM website, www.wamfest.co.uk.
Tickets for the evening event are on sale from the Exeter Phoenix Box Office, Phone 01392
667080 or online at www.exeterphoenix.org.uk