British Science Festival 2025: The Power of Art-Science Approaches for Botany Public Engagement

Are you aware that many medicinal plants are at risk of extinction, or know how to make a herbarium sheet; a historical record and a reference tool to study and identify plants, providing information on biodiversity, taxonomy, and evolution? 

For the British Science Festival 2025 in Liverpool, LJMU Postgraduate Researcher and VC Scholarship recipient, Samantha Cooper, aka ‘Mindful Garden’ delivered three interactive "Medicinal and Mindful" workshops linked to her PhD research about medicinal plants under threat, which are often underrepresented in the public domain, and how public engagement toolkits can engage increase public understanding of their importance. 

Each workshop explored the past, present, and future of botany education and medicinal plant research through interdisciplinary art-science activities centred around the medicinal plant, ginger (Zingiberaceae), These unique hands-on experiences for participants encouraged the development of new skills and knowledge around identifying and preserving plants, and their use in pharmaceuticals: 

Past workshop: Making Victorian medicines and learning about dosage using ginger. 

Present workshop: 

Revealing ginger’s antioxidant properties through reagents and microscopy. 

Future workshop: 

Learning how to mount dried plants for preservation to museum standards. 

Samantha’s research is supported by a diverse supervisory team across LJMU including art (Mark Roughley, ACI), plant biology (Dr Rachael Symonds, BES), pharmacognosy (Dr Jose Prieto-Garcia PBS), and humanities (Dr Kathryn Walchester, HSS), with support from the Botany Department at Liverpool World Museum (Donna Young), and Liverpool Botanical Trust (Stephen Lyus)

“For me, the success lay in the interdisciplinary approach I adopted when designing the workshops and developing new ideas in collaboration with experts from diverse disciplines. As a result, the workshops were extremely popular and exciting!”  (Samantha Cooper, VC PhD Scholarship Student, LJMU) 

“This fabulous event series brought plant blindness and medicinal plant conservation into the spotlight — and thanks to Samantha's creative and engaging approach, the public connected with this vital topic in fresh, inspiring ways.”  (Dr Rachael Symonds, Senior Lecturer in Plant Physiology, LJMU).

“I enjoyed the challenge of creating activities that balanced the artistic and sensorial with the scientific and measurable. Samantha’s ability to weave all our different perspectives into a cohesive and accessible experience for the public was remarkable.” (Dr Jose M. Prieto-Garcia, Senior lecturer in Plant Chemistry, LJMU)