Bacteria lessons for festival-goers

University of Manchester scientists have been taking science into the field – quite literally – with microbiology lessons at the Glastonbury Festival.

Through a mixture of science and performance, the researchers demonstrated to festival-goers the plethora of bacteria that make up their own bodies.

The project, part of the Wellcome Trust’s ‘Dirt Season’, was one of a series of exhibitions that ran across the UK until this week exploring our ambivalent relationship with dirt. The season aims to bring an understanding of the importance of our exposure to dirt and how our obsession with cleanliness may hinder our ability to combat infection.

For the Glastonbury project, the Wellcome Trust teamed up with Guerilla Science, a group of science communicators who use art and performance to challenge negative misconceptions about science; in their words ‘science by stealth’.

Andrew McBain, head of the microbiology research group in the School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, was initially ed by Guerilla Science to provide some suitably qualified microbiologists to develop a safe and visually appealing demonstration of the bacterial species present on various sites of the human body. Joe Latimer, a research associate in McBain’s lab, and Sarah Forbes, a PhD student in the Faculty of Life Sciences, volunteered and produced an effective demo that they presented at the Glastonbury Festival.

The installation was based in Shangri La, Glastonbury’s dystopian wonderland of sin and mud, in which a fictitious viral outbreak was threatening to cause an apocalypse. ‘Citizens’ were told that the virus (actually a fluorescent marker being spread around by person-to-person ) caused symptoms including dizziness, abnormal behaviour and unclean thoughts. The only way to become cleansed was to visit the ‘decontamination chamber’ in which festival goers could undergo ‘diagnosis and treatment’.

At the entrance to the chamber, after checking their wellies at the door, guests were greeted with the ‘microbial zoo’, an array of (microbially inactive) agar plates made by Sarah and Joe, that represented some of the thousands of microorganisms that any healthy individual may be host to.

“Our job was to welcome the infected citizens into the chamber and explain to them the gravity of the situation – that the virus is threatening to kill all the bacteria in their body,” explained Joe. “We were surprised at how much people seemed to engage with the science behind it, the crowd was very inquisitive and seemed genuinely shocked that they wouldn’t be able to live without these bacteria.”

Sarah added: “We were able to explain to the disbelieving punters the importance of their microbiome and reveal facts such as how the human body contains 10 times more bacterial cells than human ones and that our guts contain at least a kilogram of bacteria. These microscopic organisms help us gain nutrition from our food, allow us to build up a strong immune system and help prevent any pathogens gaining a foothold within our bodies.”

After a cleanliness check, any reveller deemed to be contaminated with the virus was sent into the chamber to face decontamination. Two treatment options were offered to those infected. Citizens could choose to undergo physical decontamination, involving a strip-down and cleansing chemical spray, accompanied with smoke and lasers, and a thorough examination by ‘outbreak experts’ in biohazard suits. The alternative option, moral decontamination, lead the patient to a psychiatrist’s office for a brief but in-depth psychological examination, which encouraged them to spill their dirty secret into the ‘shame drain’, a wall-mounted microphone which disguised their voice and broadcast their shameful woes to the public. This resulted in a complete psychological purging.

After exiting the chamber the newly-cleansed made their way over a skywalk where they observed the contaminated public awaiting the chamber below and escape to a clean new world in the form of a mud-free slumber rave.

The team were subsequently invited to present a similar demo at Bestival, which was also very well received.

"We have strived to bring science in unconventional ways into unconventional places - and this was definitely the strangest project we’ve delivered at a music festival yet," said Guerilla Science director Jen Wong.