June 18, 2025
St Paul’s School wish to offer free tickets to WLP teachers, technicians, students and parents to join us for an exciting talk by Professor Mark Miodownik.
Mark is the UCL Professor of Materials & Society as well as a writer and broadcaster. As a broadcaster and writer he is internationally known for championing engineering and materials science: his TV programmes such as How It Works have reached millions of viewers globally; he is the author of Stuff Matters, a New York Times Best Selling book, which won the Royal Society Winton Prize in 2014 and the US National Academies Communication Award in 2015.
Please see details of the talk below. Before the talk there is a drinks reception in which students in the field of Materials Science will be presenting posters on their research.
Date: Tuesday 8 July
Time: Drinks reception from 17:30, talk at 18:30 – 19:30
Talk Title: The death of consumerism and how we imagine and build a fabulous future.
Talk Blurb
Currently almost all current products and materials in our homes and cities are designed to be disposable to drive consumerism. This is causing huge plastic pollution and climate change. To address these problems we need to redesign practically everything and allowing us to replace consumerism with another less polluting economic system. This will require imagination and then the creation of new materials to remake our world – just like we always have in the history of civilization. I give examples from my research group where we are doing just this: building an imaginative research team that spans the arts, humanities and sciences and together making new materials that seem to do the impossible.
Tickets are offered on a first-come, first-served basis. If you cannot make the event after booking, please cancel your tickets to allow others to attend.
As this is an evening event it can be attended by all members of our community independent of their school. However, if you would like to run this as a school trip and require a risk assessment, please email us directly at [email protected] to arrange a group booking.