Field studies: science at Latitude festival 2015

A music festival might not seem an obvious place to see and hear science, but Latitude was full of it.

Why do people go to music festivals? When I was 18 years old and heading to Reading festival the answer was very much 'to listen to Pulp and Beck in a field while drinking overpriced beer and definitely not trying to sneak a hip flask on to the site'. But I've grown up since then, and so, it seems, have festivals.

At Latitude this weekend, I probably only watched a handful of bands. Not to say that the musical lineup wasn't great, but there was so much more on offer that caught my attention. The Wellcome Trust funded a large number of talks, interactive sessions and demos that appeared both in their 'hub', a tiny tent on the outskirts of the festival, but also in the Literary Tent at the heart of the festival and at other locations across the site.