Festival to Celebrate Old Salopian Set to Launch Next Month

The countdown is on for the launch of this year’s DarwIN Shrewsbury Festival, the annual celebration of Old Salopian and the town of Shrewsbury’s most famous son, Charles Darwin.

The festival, which takes place online this year, begins on Tuesday, February 9^th and sees a host of thought-provoking online talks, films and quizzes as well as a virtual birthday toast on February 12^th, to celebrate what would have been Darwin’s 212^th birthday.

Once again Shrewsbury School is proud to be contributing to the organisation of the DarwIN Shrewsbury Festival and to be one of its sponsors. From sourcing eminent speakers from this country and abroad, to including our own teaching staff in the line-up, the School has helped to shape the programme. 

Stuart Cowper, Head of Partnership and Community Engagement commented -  ‘I am grateful to David Wray, Richard Case and Torin Morgan in the Science Department for all their hard work helping to put together an exciting series of lectures that will show how Darwin’s theories continue to underpin and to shape today’s scientific thinking and research.  These lectures will be of great interest worldwide to anyone with an interest in Darwin himself, as well as to those seeking understand how his theories help us explain and tackle many of today’s social and environmental challenges.’

As part of the programme Shrewsbury School is delighted to introduce to a wider audience Dr Kathryn Broadhouse who was recently appointed as our STEM Fellow.  On Friday 12^th February, she will give a talk on how we use neuroimaging to study the human brain and its function. She will first look at how the brain’s structure is tied to our evolutionary past and how this, in some ways, determines how we think and process information. She will then look at how machine learning, neural networks and artificial intelligence have evolved from models of the brain and how we are using them to study the brain further.  More details and booking links can be found here: darwin.originalshrewsbury.co.uk/events/developments-in-artificial-intelligence

By taking the Festival online this year we hope and expect to reach to out to an even greater audience, sharing Darwin with experts and enthusiasts across the country and around the world.  The Festival runs until February 17^th.  Places can be booked on Zoom talks at - darwin.originalshrewsbury.co.uk/