The Observatory
What is The Observatory?
Boomtown has always been a place for transformation. Where strangers become collaborators, where every story leaves a lasting impact as we take steps to imagine a better world.
Now we're asking: what if we could understand why?
We’re bringing together some of the best / biggest / brightest minds in social research
The Observatory is Boomtown’s new academic research hub, led by Dr. Martha Newson. It will host an eclectic mix of workshops, talk panels, and live scientific studies exploring the human experience - from neuroscience and psychology to performance, identity, and collective behaviour.
The Observatory is a new space at the heart of the city where leading researchers explore what happens when thousands of people come together to create, connect and let go. Wellbeing. Identity. Collective experience. The science behind the feeling.
Boomtown isn't just a festival. It's a living experiment. A place where culture moves forward, ideas collide, and real-world learning happens in the wildest of settings.
We've always believed this city can change the world beyond its boundaries. The Observatory is how we prove it.
Meet the Researchers
Antonio Monteoliva and Dr Chloe Place | University of the West of England (UWE)
Research Summary
Good people of Boomtown! Join our quest to explore how genuine human connection is born. Leave words behind and step into the body. Through simple guided movement, shared attention and playful interaction, you’ll discover what happens when we meet beyond conversation, roles or social scripts. We begin with individual awareness and gradually open into shared experiences, always with full choice, clear boundaries and respect for your pace. Step in, step out, or simply observe. There’s no expectation. Be curious. Notice how your presence shifts the space, how connection emerges and dissolves, and how strangers can become something else, even briefly.
Dr Jesse Mehravar | Royal Holloway | University of London
Research Summary
Scared of getting the setlist wrong at Tribe of Frog? Afraid of losing your mates at Lion’s Gate? “Fear and Loathing in Boomtown… a Study of Attitudes and Experiences” invites you to explore how our bodies respond to threat - and how our responses are related to our thoughts and feelings about the world. Join an innovative research experience bringing science out of the lab and into Boomtown! While other studies rely on photographs or imagination to evoke threat, we invite you to face fear directly (but safely) through immersive embodied tasks - all in the name of science! What are you afraid of?
Sarah Osborn | Swansea University
Research Summary
Step into a world where movement meets mind. In this calming yoga session, you’ll flow through a gentle poses and experience stillness while wearing EEG headsets that capture your brain’s natural rhythms in real time. Watch your inner world come alive as your brain activity transforms into vibrant, one-of-a-kind mandalas. This is science you can feel! Come explore connection, creativity, and consciousness through breath, body, and technology. No experience needed, just your curiosity. Come as you are, move, reflect, and be a part of research.
Prof Fiona Measham | University of Liverpool
Research Summary
Drug markets are more dangerous than ever. The Loop's Crazy Chemists are here to change that.Hands-on. No judgement. Real talk on testing kits, adulterants, and staying safe.Plus: drug myths busted, politics unpacked, and how to look out for each other.Be informed. Be an active bystander. Be part of the conversation.
Rob Coulson | Ethnobotanical Safety and Research Alliance
Research Summary
Rob is a therapist, integration guide, musician and Dj. He will be speaking about belonging, integration and grief through the lens of predictive processing and the generative model.
Ali Wright and Prof David Luke |University of Greenwich
Research Summary
Creating your own reality.. in your dreams! Now’s your chance to learn how to fly - without a parachute - to walk through walls, to defy the laws of physics, biology and, well, all of waking reality. This workshop will introduce you to the exciting and impossible possibilities of lucid dreaming. You’ll explore how to expand your sensory awareness, become more mindful, set clear intentions for becoming more lucid and awake in your dreams, and how to test your reality - something that might come in handy when you are brain deep in how unreal Boomtown is.
Isabella Roberts and Dr Vanissa Wanick | University of Southampton | Winchester School of Arts
Research Summary
Join a group of fellow Boomtown revellers to dance, deliberate and decide together. We’ll start with an embodiment exercise before moving into a mini citizens’ assembly on a real issue affecting local communities. You’ll discuss ideas in small groups and see whether you can reach any form of consensus. A small sample of participants will wear mood-ring-style biosensory equipment to capture heart and skin responses in real-time. If you can’t join on the day, an upcoming immersive digital version will be available, so sign up! No prior knowledge needed - just curiosity, openness, and a willingness to move and be moved.
Dr Daniel Toribio-Flórez, Prof Karen Douglas, Dr Ricky Green and Prof Robbie Sutton | University of Kent
Research Summary
CONSPIRACY KITCHEN: COME COOK WITH US
Come cook with us at the Conspiracy Kitchen, where we’ll explore what makes a conspiracy theory a conspiracy theory. In this hands-on experience, you’ll use three key ingredients - a group, an action, and a motive - to create, serve up, and rate conspiracy theories with specific goals in mind. Together, we’ll discuss what makes some feel more or less believable, memorable, harmless, harmful, or likely to spread than others. You’ll leave with a sharper sense of what makes conspiracy theories differe…
Dr Daniel Toribio-Flórez, Prof Karen Douglas, Dr Ricky Green and Prof Robbie Sutton | University of Kent
Research Summary
THE TASTE TEST: EXPLORING FOOD PREFERENCES
Visit The Observatory for a Food Preference and Tasting experience, a short, food-themed session exploring taste, choice, and everyday food decisions in a festival setting. You’ll take part in a quick and engaging activity involving flavour preferences, food allocation, and tasting. Share your preferences, make a few food-related choices, and leave with a little something tasty.
Liz Davis, Prof Ravi Das, Rebecca Harding and Prof Tom Freeman, | University College London | University of Bath | Imperial College London
Research Summary
How do you stay on your A-game and survive the post-Boomtown scaries? From supplements and saunas to a tactical hair of the dog, we want to know the routines that actually get you through. We’re binning the urban myths to find out what really works for recovery and wellbeing on the ground. Join our research to take part in the science of the sesh!
Kate Dalby and Leah Kurta | Kinda Studios
Research Summary
What if you could see your brainwaves turned into real-time art that reveals how you feel? EVE (The EEG Visualiser of Emotions) is a live emotional visualisation tool that transforms EEG signals into dynamic, responsive visuals. Blending neurotechnology, AI, and art, EVE opens new ways to explore emotional insight, user experience, and live experience. It can create interactive & personalised sensory designs, drive immersive wellbeing experiences, measure mood, emotion & real-time neural responses, map emotional learning & deepen meaning. In this workshop, Kinda will demo EVE and invite reflection on how we can safely integrate emotional data into design.
Dr Grace Blest-Hopley | King's College London
Research Summary
This session blends grounded education with experiential practice, exploring the unique relationship between women's bodies, cycles, and psychedelic medicine. We'll unpack the latest research on how psychedelics interact with female physiology, hormones, and nervous systems — alongside the cultural and historical context often missing from mainstream conversations.
Dr Keren MacLennan | University of Bath
Research Summary
Join a welcoming, creative workshop exploring the experiences of Neurodivergent festival-goers, such as those who are Autistic, ADHD, dyslexic, have Tourette’s, learning disabilities etc. Through relaxed discussion and hands-on activities like arts and crafts, we’ll share the joys, challenges, and realities of festival life. Connect with others, express your perspective, and contribute to a pioneering research project. Together, we’ll help shape what truly makes festivals magical, accessible, and inclusive for Neurodivergent individuals and communities – informing future events and amplifying lived experiences.
Natalie Davis | Federation of Holistic Therapists
Research Summary
The city hums with noise and the bass shakes the walls. Somewhere underneath the chaos of Boomtown — your body will be keeping score and navigating the world in its own language. Warm up the weekend with a radical new skill to support your body navigate the city. Step inside The Retreat and let Natalie guide you through the forgotten technology of your own hands. Drawing on ancient Taoist principles from Chi Nei Tsang, this is your invitation to drop down from the brain’s consciousness and meet your own inner mechanics — the living, breathing architecture that carries you through the madness. A deeply therapeutic abdominal self-massage workshop will gift you a skill you can take beyond the gates and keep for life. Work with the breath and the wisdom of your organic body to soothe the nervous system and dissolve the tension that quietly builds. No experience needed. No redesign required. Just you, your hands, and the radical act of turning inward. Simple. Accessible. Yours for life.
Emma Marshall | Author of Music is Medicine
Research Summary
Music doesn’t just play; it rewires you. You feel it in your chest, your breath, your mood shifting with every drop. A pull, a release, a doorway back into yourself and into the people moving beside you. This study explores how rhythm, electronic music and natural movement shape stress, connection, emotion and regulation. No choreography, no rules just step in, feel the bass and let your body answer back. Rhythm lands in the nervous system, in the shared pulse between strangers becoming a tribe. Join the live city research and help rewrite what rave culture really gives us.
Iryana Mosina and George Powell | University College London | University of Greenwich | Royal Holloway, University of London
Research Summary
This gathering will unite those of you, dearest citizens of Boomtown, who seek to pause and reflect in between other exciting celebratory offerings. Join us for a mindful yet fun transition from festival day to festival night. Gift yourself a pause, a chance to reflect, to connect with like-minded others, and to enter the rest of your festival adventures in a state of embodied manifestation – though be careful what you wish for ;) Your curiosity shall contribute to scientific research and be rewarded with a festival food voucher.
Dr Martha Newson | University of Greenwich | University of Oxford
Research Summary
Join us for the opening of the first-ever Observatory at Boomtown! Learn more about our academic research and workshop programming, plan your sessions with us, speak to research teams or just come hang out with us. We are excited to meet you! The Observatory is brought to you by the core team: Dr Martha Newson, Jamie Foster, Iryana Mosina, George Powell, Isabel Macpherson Bruty, Lucy Clarke, Jessica Ahern-McDiarmid, and Georgia Graham.
