An exhibition which will explore the experiences associated with living with chronic pain will open at Keele University in March.

The exhibition, called Circling, is open from 4 March until 27 March and will bring together Keele’s Dr Ceri Morgan’s expertise in geopoetics and Keele Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences’ Visiting Fellow Dr Anna Macdonald's site-based dance and film practices in order to rethink understandings of walking and offer new interpretations of persistent pain.

Circling is a new moving image exhibition, which explores the physical and emotional journeys attached to the experience of living with persistent pain. The artworks emerged from workshops with participants that focused on the act of walking. Collectively they respond to themes such as the changing sense of scale that pain can bring, the nature of chronicity, and the complexity of walking with others.

The exhibition is the culmination of a collaborative fellowship awarded to Dr Macdonald, who works at the Manchester School of Art at the Manchester Metropolitan University, and Dr Morgan by Keele’s Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences. The Fellowship explored new participatory art methods, which brought together geopoetics, somatics and moving image practice. In 2019-20, the Keele Institute for Social Inclusion awarded funding to develop the work to focus on the relationship between chronicity, pain and hope in collaboration with Professor Anthony Wrigley, a bioethicist from Keele.

Visitors are also invited to attend a talk delivered by Dr Macdonald about the research behind the exhibition at 5pm on 17 March in the Keele University Art Gallery.