I first learnt about the Pansy Project when I was exploring the queer symbolism of different flowers, such as lavender, green carnations and pansies. Formerly a slur used against gay men dating back to the 1920s and 1930s, Paul Farfleet has reclaimed ‘pansies’ and since 2005 has been planting the flowers at different sites of homophobic and transphobic abuse. When I visited the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool, I did not know the project was on display. At first, I was greeted b

Its 2025. I’m approaching the end of my palaeontology studies, and it concludes with a journey across southern Germany. This trip saw me and my classmates visit many of the country’s natural history museums. The first museum we visited was the Naturmuseum Senckenberg in Frankfurt. It was a wonderful museum that I sadly didn’t have time to fully explore and hope to return to one day. Although there are several choices in where to go upon entering the museum, the dinosaur footp

A mysterious stranger offers you £1 billion, but there’s a catch - an immortal, super-intelligent snail appears and will chase you down for the rest of your life, and if it ever touches you - you die. Would you take the deal? I love asking stupid theoretical questions like this - they always spark a great discussion, with people throwing out the craziest ideas - and during a discussion about The Immortal Snail on a recent night out reminded me of one of my favourite stories o

No, it isn’t the name of a movie, but rather an interesting event in the early Cold War. Let me take you to the 4th August 1945, three months after the surrender of Germany, two days before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and eleven days before the surrender of Japan and the end of WWII. American ambassador W. Averell Harriman is given a carved wooden copy of the US Great Seal by some Soviet Young Pioneer Organization of the Soviet Union children as a gift of peace and frien

Sometimes, what at first appears to be the most standard of paintings can have the most unusual of stories. In Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire: winter evening after rain , oil painting by Andrew MacCallum When I first saw Andrew MacCallum’s In Sherwood Forest, Nottinghamshire: winter evening after rain in the V&A, I saw it as a fairly typical painting - a very beautifully painted rendition of Sherwood Forest, with intricate barren trees silhouetted by a glowing winter sky,

Tyrannosaurus rex is without doubt the world’s most famous dinosaur. It’s the one dinosaur everybody knows, the only species known by its full name and quite possibly the biggest carnivore to ever walk the Earth. To many it represents the ultimate predator. It’s no wonder T. rex is almost guaranteed to appear in any form of dinosaur media. Whether it be books, games and of course films and documentaries like Jurassic Park and Walking with Dinosaurs. It’s crazy to think then t