Exhibition at City Library
Reimagining Sleep Exhibition at Newcastle City Library
Following our workshop series and online exhibition, the Reimagining Sleep exhibition was on at Newcastle upon Tyne’s City Library (level 2) from 14th to 28th March 2024.
Marking World Sleep Day (15th March), the Reimagining Sleep exhibition explored the lived experience of sleep. The exhibition gathered a collection of objects, writings, and soundscapes made by, with, and for people with sleep issues. In a world that all too often frames sleep either as a waste of time or as a mere tool for productivity, this exhibition invited viewers to consider and reimagine their relationship with sleep. We asked: what does sleep mean to you?
The exhibition placed playful collaboration at its core. Visitors were invited to give their input and grow the exhibition’s collections. Our goals were to foster wellbeing through creativity and to connect and involve multiple voices, in order to facilitate knowledge-sharing around sleep.
Exhibition Programme
The exhibition programme featured a public talk (14th March, 6-7pm) by the Reimagining Sleep project Principal Investigator, Dr Diletta De Cristofaro (Northumbria University), and a creative workshop (23rd March, 10am-12pm) with the exhibition’s curator and artist Chiara Dellerba. Read on for more details about these events.
Are We in a Sleep Crisis? An Exploration of Contemporary Culture | City Library | Level 2 | 14th March 2024, 6-7pm
A talk by Dr Diletta De Cristofaro, Assistant Professor in English Literature at Northumbria University
In this talk, the Reimagining Sleep project Principal Investigator, Dr Diletta De Cristofaro, will explore the selection of sleep books she has curated for the exhibition. While sleep science is divided on whether we are currently experiencing a sleep crisis or not, contemporary literature is full of bad sleepers. Dr De Cristofaro will consider what literature, and culture more broadly, tell us about our relationship with sleep and the world we inhabit.
Oneiric Journey to the Nearby Cosmos | City Library | Level 2 | 23rd March 2024, 10am-12pm
A creative workshop with Chiara Dellerba
Join exhibition curator and artist Chiara Dellerba in exploring how our bodies and minds react to sounds. During the workshop, you will experiment with creative writing techniques and mark-making to develop visual responses to meditative soundscapes. If you’d like, your responses will then be uploaded to the companion online exhibition, enriching its collaborative nature and the plurality of voices represented.
Understanding and Reimagining Sleep and Its Disorders is a public engagement project led by Dr Diletta Cristofaro and funded by Wellcome (Research Enrichment – Public Engagement grant). Hosted by Northumbria University and run in partnership with The Sleep Charity, the project consists in a workshop series, an art exhibition, and resources.
