Living Rooms

Living Rooms explored different ways in which the arts and creativity can inspire prosocial attitudes and behaviours.

People United brought together leading artists, academics, and thinkers to discuss arts, creativity, and kindness at three interactive events.

The events were hosted in a relaxed living room setting, the audiences sat in soft armchairs and hot soup was served in extra-large mugs.

The three themes explored were:

1. Empathy: the monkey and the peanut
   Playwright and campaigner Sarah Woods and neuroscientist and author of The Empathic Brain, Professor Christian Keysers, discussed a shared curiosity in empathy and its role in life’s smallest moments and greatest challenges.
2. Beyond ourselves: can art shape our values?
   Change strategist and author of Common Cause: the case for working with our cultural values, Tom Crompton, and artist Dorothy Cross, who’s work plays with the relationship of the human and the natural world, explored how art can inspire us to question and challenge societal norms and nurture kind values.
3. Ways of Seeing – the body as metaphor
   Jasmin Vardimon, a dancer, choreographer and artistic director of the award-winning Jasmin Vardimon Company and Simone Schnall, Director of the Cambridge Embodied Cognition and Emotion Laboratory, explored the potential of dance to help us reflect on other perspectives and ways of seeing.