Stories from Silence

Saturday 18 July, 14.00-15.30
Sunday 19 July, 14.00-15.30

A Native American in full war dress armed with bottles of prairie medicine, an exploding bucket, Japanese demons, and a voice from plague-ridden London in 1665 all feature in a live storytelling event to be held at Wellcome Collection on 18-19 July.Four specially commissioned storytellers will use performances, Japanese story boards and live demonstrations to tell their stories, each inspired by one of four different objects in the Wellcome Library.

Story lovers of all ages will be transported to London during the Great Plague of 1665-66, to the magical land of Japanese spirits and demons, to Clapham Common in the 1890s – where assistants dressed as Native Americans (or ‘Red Indians’ as the Victorians knew them) touted Sequah medicines while volunteers had their teeth pulled – and taken on a school trip to San Diego in the mid-1990s to hear Francis Crick’s colourful personal account of his early youthful, and at times explosive, experiments.

These four stories, spanning different countries and centuries, bring to life four fascinating items in the Wellcome Library – the world’s greatest collections of books, manuscripts, pictures and films relating to the history of medicine.

Families and adults are welcome at this free event, which also includes audio description of the four central objects, as well as speech-to-text live subtitles (on Saturday 18 July) and BSL (on Sunday 19 July).

To book your free tickets, visit the Wellcome Collection website.