Festival of Weather, Arts and Music (WAM)

The EMS Outreach & Communication Award 2015 was presented to the UK Festival of Weather, Arts and Music.

Founded in 2012 by Pierrette Thomet Stott, the Festival of Weather, Arts and Music (WAM) has found new ways to communicate the beauty and fascination of meteorology thereby enhancing the understanding of weather and climate science by the general public in the United Kingdom. This outstanding initiative has broadened the reach of scientific meteorology, enabled the general public to engage with meteorology in novel ways and enhanced many people’s appreciation of its effects on our lives and the challenges involved in forecasting it. The list of innovative approaches combining arts and meteorology is long.

Since its foundation in 2012, WAM has held three very successful events. The first festival in 2012 saw about a thousand people take part in a wide variety of events in Reading Town Hall. These included a weather fair, music recitals, a Climate Change Question Time, an art exhibition, a weather clinic, and a recreation of Lewis Fry Richardson’s Forecast Factory.

Pierrette Thomet Stott, the WAM Director, said: “I am absolutely delighted to find WAM has found this recognition in European circles, and I am deeply honoured by this award.”

About Pierrette Thomet Stott: She holds a BA in Music from the University of Reading and a Diploma in Operatic Performance from the University of London. She trained as a mezzo-soprano and has performed in Great Britain and abroad as a recitalist and oratorio soloist as well as having many years’ experience teaching singing. In 2011 Pierrette devised the idea for a festival bringing together the arts and meteorology/climate science, to promote Reading as a centre of excellence in both fields and explore the possibilities inherent in bringing these different disciplines to interact. Since the first WAM Festival she has led the development of WAM through the RMetS WAM Special Interest Group, which she chairs.

More information on WAM events: