Life Course Golf Course
In 2018 the Green Man festival in the Brecon Beacons, celebrated the 10th birthday of Einstein’s Garden – an area dedicated to making science and nature an inspiring part of the festival experience. As part of this, with funding from MRC, researchers from UCL partnered with fanSHEN theatre company to create an activity to engage the public with findings from longitudinal life course research. The scientific team was made up of research scientists, clinicians and research nurses; making them well placed to show case the variety of research that occurs from life course studies.
The successful collaboration led to the development of “Life Course golf course”; part crazy golf, part insight into research from longitudinal cohort studies. In this activity, festival goers were recruited into the life course-themed six-hole golf course. Their caddy (research scientists) navigated them through the ‘life course golf course’ by discussing and describing how studying birth cohorts have helped us to understand how early life factors can affect later health outcomes.