Anatomy Art with our Junior and Teen Vet clubs
Do you want to work with animals when you grow up? Then you’re a perfect fit for our Junior and Teen Vet Clubs!
On the 30th May the Widening Participation team held a day of fun activities for our members, who are all thinking about becoming vets, vet nurses or biologists in the future.
The day focused on the theme of ‘Anatomy Art’, which has been very important throughout the course of history as Dr Grace Mackintosh Sim explained in the big show. Art is a wonderful tool to describe and record our natural world, and Dr Grace took the audience through how it has been used in the past, from ancient zodiac to Edward Wilson’s ground-breaking specimen paintings.
The first session of the day was just for junior vets (aged 7-12), and they got their artistic brains going with a spot of animal Pictionary, and volunteers helped up pin the anatomy on our horse painting. 
Teen vets (ages 13 – 18) came later, and their show led them on a journey back in time, to when natural philosophers (scientists) would advertise for artists to join their yearlong voyages to ‘unknown lands’. The teen vets were asked “would you take the job?”, and it looks like we’re going to have some adventurous scientists in the near future!
After the show, the young vets got stuck in doing some serious specimen drawing with our amazing array of animal skulls, from a ram to a broad snouted caiman! They used pencils and chalks to create drawings similar to those voyaging artists from the time before Instagram. They could then dress up in our real vet surgery gowns, learn to bandage our (toy) animals, and get some fantastic photos with their new piece of art.
Afterwards it was time to meet a scientist who uses patterns in their work. Emily Madsen from UCL’s CBER research group talked about her amazing work in the Masaai Mara reserve in Kenya. Emily is looking at the big cats in this area and so, needs to be able to tell the individuals apart. The young vets were asked to ‘spot the difference’, and pair cheetah together based on pattern recognition from their back leg. Before photography was available, people had to draw the animal’s specific patterns on paper, so our young vets got to draw their own cheetah ID sheet or simply make a multi-coloured, star spangled cheetah.
It was a fantastic day, and the chance for many of the young people to see inside a university and consider their future careers.
Anyone can join our Junior or Teen Vet clubs, simply follow these links
Juniors (7-12) or Teens (13 - 18)
If you’re interested in anatomy art, the Royal Vet College and Royal Society of Biology run a joint competition called the Nancy Rothwell Award, specifically for specimen drawings.