Ash Ranpura and Gavin Pretor-Pinney explore our increasingly troubled relationship with nature.  What can science tell us about the well-being benefits of engaging with the natural world and how are these benefits changing, as we come to see nature not just as a solace, but a threat?

Gavin is the founder of The Cloud Appreciation Society, a movement and way of life, not just an organisation, whose manifesto calls for a reassessment of "unjustly maligned” clouds and a pledge "to fight “blue-sky thinking” wherever we find it” as “life would be so dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.”  Having built a following of over 60,000 members across 120 countries since the Society was founded in 2005, Gavin now speaks globally on why and how best to appreciate clouds, which he describes as “the most dynamic, evocative and poetic aspect of nature.”

Ash is a neurologist and neuroscientist, co-author of How To Be Human: The Manual (with Ruby Wax and Gelong Thubten).

6:30 - 7:30 pm

Talk and drink at GBS Fine Art
1st Floor, 13 Sadler Street, Wells BA5 2RR

8:00 pm

Set dinner at Root, 12 Sadler Street, Wells BA5 2SE