About Us

Creativity arises in the brain and is everyone’s asset, a critical skill for the coming century, which can be nurtured and enhanced. Now in its fourth year Creative Brain Week has rapidly achieved local and international significance in its examination of how brain science and creativity collide.

This annual week of events explores and promotes the relationships between creativity and the brain in areas including social development, technology, the arts, entrepreneurship, brain health and physical health. A pioneering event illustrating innovation at the intersection of arts and brain science, including creative approaches to health and wellbeing across the life course, shares experience and knowledge from academic and public practice.

By showcasing innovation at the intersection of neuroscience and the arts, Creative Brain Week helps raise national and international awareness of the powerful relationship between brain health and creativity, and stimulates research into how creative practice might mitigate the negative effects of poverty, low education and disease on brain functioning and quality of life.

We continue to programme with these core principles in mind:

• No Tell Without A Show, No Show Without A Tell
• Nothing About Us Without Us
• Each One Teach One

In 2025, our programme changed format a little:

• Speakers’ Programme:
  •  Monday 9th – community building session reflecting on activity over the last year, The Pratchett Prize and the exhibition launch
  • Tuesday 10th – a day filled with presentations and discussion
• Threads Programme
  • Wednesday 11th-Friday 13th – “Threads”, cluster groups exploring topics through cross disciplinary and inter agency dialogues, across TCD. More details available here
  • How the Thread sessions worked depends upon their focus. Some were small invite only groups, others open to all. For some it was a short presentation as provocation, a discussion, and an opportunity to reflect. Others were physical. One was based around making a mandala, another a Timeline. There was a short presentation back from each on Friday 13th to a wider audience in the Naughton Institute. 
• Creative Programme, Associate Programme and Exhibition – Full programme details available here
  • SoloSIRENs How Do We Care? Symposium – SoloSIRENs symposium will create a space to explore the nature of care in theatre, arts participation and society through installations, speakers and facilitated discussions. It continued SoloSIRENs ongoing inquiry into feminist aesthetics and the roles of care and collaboration in our models of theatre making and community engagement. The symposium was free and open to all: artists, audiences, students, academics, community workers, anyone interested in how we are caring and how we can care more.
  • Exhibition – From Monday to Friday our creative programme was free open and free to attend.  
  • Film Programme – on Wednesday and Thursday we showed films which address Alzheimers and Dementia programmed by Michelle Memran.  

The programme each year reflects our commitment to creativity, community, inter-disciplinarity, equity and the transformative power of collaboration, as well as our active response to transition and turmoil.  We look forward to welcoming you and your contributions to our gathering, celebration and exploration.

Initiatives inspired and informed by previous events include: 

• Global Creative Brain Week Events, “thematically connected locally informed” events in Australia, Botswana, Egypt, India, Singapore and Argentina.
• The development of five Lancet Global Specials detailing how arts addresses the impact of non-communicable diseases.
• The Pratchett Prize reflecting the life of author Terry Pratchett by acknowledges the contribution of a scientist, artist, activist, or person living with the condition who collaboratively or separately, works to reduce the impact of Alzheimer’s.
• This newly published book, Creative Brain Week – Knowledge Making brings ideas from Creative Brain Week into print. It is available in four languages – English, Irish, Portuguese and Spanish.  Find out more and access books
• Informed by the Creativity, Neuroscience and Equity session in 2022, Trinity and US Universities develop a Centre for Forced Migration Studies. View videos | Read news story
• ArtsandBrain.com – supported by the Latin American Brain Health Institute (BrainLat), Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile, Atlantic Fellows at the Global Brain Health Institute (GBHI) and collaborators identify and share successful creative practice promoting brain health and wellbeing to encourage its adoption worldwide by peer networks
• Copa Y Vida – Musicians in Argentina and neuroscientists in Dublin develop music for brain health programmes responding to complex needs of vulnerable populations, supported by GBHI and The Atlantic Institute