Love Light labs powered by Aviva

We opened the festival with Love Light Labs, a free day-time symposium inviting people, businesses and communities to come together to drive social change. Powered by Aviva, we shined a light on how Norwich and Norfolk organisations are contributing to help build solutions to tackle loneliness and other social challenges.

Watch a short video from the symposium below.

Running order:

12.30     Registration and Network

12.45     Welcome:

                Stefan Gurney, Executive Director, Norwich BID               

                Jude Brooks, UK Head of Corporate Responsibility, Aviva

13.10     Guest Speaker -Olivia Remes (Cambridge Researcher and Ted Talk specialist)

14.00     Love Light Labs

15.00     Refreshments

15.20     Guest Speaker

16.10     Summary of Love Light Labs

17.00     Symposium close/Launch of Love Light Festival

Light Lab

Hosted by Linn Clabburn, Programme Director, Cambridge Norwich Tech Corridor. This Lab will showcase how businesses in the region are using light in innovative and vital ways to power social change and promote inclusion.

Prior to leading the implementation of the Tech Corridor strategy, Linn worked in venture capital investing in Greentech and clean-tech businesses and setting up international VC funds. With a background in environmental science and technology Linn is very interested in driving a sustainability and inclusive growth agenda for the Tech Corridor.

Health Lab

What does 'Arts for Health' mean in 2020? Natalie Jode, Executive Director, Creative Arts East will be hosting the Health Lab. Creative Arts East recently won a prestigious Royal Society for Public Health award for their creative programme 'Our Day Out' which tackles rural isolation and loneliness in older people.

Natalie is the Executive Director at Creative Arts East, a charity committed to developing artistically vibrant, connected and healthy rural communities by increasing people’s aspirations, skills and wellbeing through the power of the arts. The organisation is part of the Arts Council England National Portfolio and holds Investors in People status. In 2019 Creative Arts East secured a prestigious Royal Society of Public Health Award for its arts intervention work with older people across Breckland and North Norfolk. As an experienced and strategic arts manager, Natalie is concerned with building ambitious and relevant partnerships and programmes which affect real and lasting change for rural residents and their communities and has long been involved in the design and delivery of arts for health and wellbeing in Norfolk.

Sharing Lab

Marking the anniversary of Norwich becoming a ‘Sharing City’, the Sharing Lab will be hosted by Kate Price, Neighbourhoods and Community Enabling Manager, Norwich City Council. In a Sharing City,  how can alternative social currencies create positive engagement and make people feel more connected to each other and their community?

Kate is as adoring advocate for the city of Norwich, having been one of the myriad of UEA graduates who make the city their home and the fantastic football team their own, but has worked across the country on projects to develop areas of deprivation and disadvantage.

Kate now works for Norwich City Council leading their innovative Community enabling programme, inspiring people to make the city a better place. Sharing has been weaved into every facet of the programme from circular practices to support the environmental agenda, partnership projects and coproduction, businesses using their skills outside the workplace and the council understanding more about what it can share with citizens in the form of a collective vision for the city. She is a fervent believer that people coming together is the only way to make real, sustainable change for the future.

Design Lab

Hosted by Hilary Carlisle, Dean of Design and Architecture and Ben Salter, Course Leader, Interior Design, Norwich University of the Arts. This Lab will focus on ‘Design Thinking’: what is it and how can we use it to support placemaking and encourage inclusivity in urban contexts?

Hilary is the Dean of Design and Architecture and Professor or Design at Norwich University of the Arts. She is a strong advocate of the benefits of using design thinking strategies and the importance of design and creativity in everyone’s lives.

Hilary’s research centres on the coding of algorithms to generate non-repeating patterns for textiles. She completed her PhD in 2002 in this area and has continued to develop digitally printed textiles in this way since then.

Assisting Hilary is Ben Salter. Ben is the Course Leader for BA Interior Design at Norwich University of the Arts. He has worked professionally as a designer across interior disciplines such as residential, temporary and exhibition design. In 2003 Ben was awarded a Masters Degree in Visual Communication (Scenography).

Ben’s research is focused around the subject of design and emotion, exploring the connection between space and wellbeing. His experiences in co-creation and the application of mindfulness as a design methodology is informed by an interest in design fiction and the use of environments as narrative devices in film and television.