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 third 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.

This year’s theme was Attention, Connection and Love

We explored the above themes through arts, neuroscience, and their application:

Attention

• How does it work?
• What do people pay attention to?
• What happens as attention changes?

Connection

• How are people connected and what to?
• What connections do people ignore?
• Can connections be nurtured?

Love (and when it isn’t enough)

• How do neuroscientists and artists understand love?
• Is love enough to build global systems of care?

The themes enabled artists and scientists, people with lived experience and practitioners to bring the best knowledge and expertise from across disciplines, to address the challenges of non-communicable diseases like Alzheimer’s, and complex issues like brain health, poverty and environmental impact featuring:

• Presentations: explore “Attention, Connection and Love” as a framework to make connections between knowledge developing across disciplines and cultures
• Creative exhibition: wraps around the event presentations

Initiatives inspired and informed by the 2022 and 2023 events include: 

• Creative Brain Week Satellites, “thematically connected locally informed” events in Australia, Botswana, Egypt and India.
• 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