What’s in your heart? How often do you take the time to listen to someone else’s heart? Heart Felt is an experience to encourage kindness, connection and healing. If you are given a heart, take care of it, tell it your story, pass it on and when it asks, bring it home. Join researchers to explore individual and collective wellbeing.
Heart Felt is an interactive experience engaging with healing. The project was developed by Einstein’s Garden in collaboration with researchers from the University of Exeter.
Eight beautifully crafted wooden hearts journeyed between participants, connecting individuals as they were passed on from person to person. Each holder of the heart, wrote or drew what was in their heart and posted the message into the wooden object.
Every hour the hearts beat which was the signal for the holder to bring them home to the Heart Chamber, a circular tent for sharing, discussion and reflection.
In Heart Reading ceremonies, the hearts were opened, passed around participants sat in a circle and the messages inside read out before being displayed inside the tent.
What I think is happening is that people are realising that if you share what’s really in your heart with others that helps you to heal, which is really what we’re about here.
– Heart Felt researcher, Green Man 2017
Researchers exploring healing and approaches to wellbeing chatted to participants about their work and listened to participants own perspectives on individual and collective wellbeing.
We’ve been sending the hearts out round the festival and not knowing for sure if they would come back. Every time one of them has come back, it just feels so special. There was one that was returned overnight, so we thought we’d lost it completely, and then in the morning – there it was, at our front door.
– Heart Felt researchers, Green Man 2017
Heart Felt was supported by the Wellcome Trust, as part of a three-year award experimenting with new approaches to creative science engagement. It was first presented in Einstein’s Garden at Green Man 2017.
Heart Felt was produced by Einstein’s Garden in collaboration with scientists from the University of Exeter and Mercurial Wrestler.
