The occasion was the opening of an exhibition of the Sutton Hoo ship burial, now returned from the British Museum to its place of origin in Suffolk. The cache of gold and garnet-decorated objects provides an insight into the rituals and craftsmanship of England at the time when the Early English poem about life in the mead halls and Beowulf’s fight with the monster Grendel was written. Tel: 01394 389700.

The Midland Actors Theatre will be touring schools with a dramatisation of Beowulf from May. Children studying the poem at key stage 2 will watch a performance, then devise and rehearse their own version to be performed to teachers, parents and pupils in a day. Up to 90 pupils can be involved. The company is also touring a production of Macbeth, accompanied by workshops for KS34. MAT information: 0121 608 7144, www.midlandactorstheatre.co.uk Some fishy posters should soon be on their way to you. The Sea Fish Industry Authority set a competition for primary and secondary students, Feed Your Imagination. More than 12,000 children, aged up to 13, entered, using paint, pencils, crayon and digitally generated images to demonstrate the tastiness and healthiness of seafood. Posters of the four winning pictures will be sent to 29,000 schools at the end of this month. These and the eight runners-up can be seen on the authority’s education website: www.seafish-education.org.uk We used to be told that eating fish was good for the brain. I’ve no idea if that is true, but I’m not going to pass up a ready-made link to Head On. This exhibition at the Science Museum crosses the boundaries between science and art, providing a little information about the brain and a good deal about the way artists have used their own cerebral matter to investigate the brain as a subject. Along with the work of eight contemporary artists (each collaborating with a scientist), there is some fascinating historical material, including half the preserved brain of Charles Babbage and artefacts related to that Victorian favourite, phrenology.

The size of the human brain was long thought to correlate with intelligence, hence the investigation of the Babbage organ. Babbage invented computers with a brain that weighed 1.46kg, by the way.

Among the artists represented is Katharine Dowson, whose installations express her frustration at being underestimated at school because she was dyslexic. The desk with Scrabble board attached bearing words such as “frustration”, “pressure”, “dense” and “illiterate” is especially telling.

Annie Cattrell describes consciousness in physical terms, presenting delicate and jewel-like sculptures of the parts of the brain responsible for seeing and hearing. She worked with neurosurgeons to acquire digital data, which was rendered into 3-D form in wax and the models encapsulated in resin.

Andrew Carnie’s “Magic Forest” is a mesmerising walk-in installation consisting of gauzes on to which are projected slide dissolves of living brain cells.

Also on display is David Hockney’s camera obscura, showing how artists have used optical projections for centuries, and Elizabeth Frink’s stunning, massive bronze head, “Desert Quartet 1”. For information about Science Museum education: 020 7942 4000, www.sciencemuseum.org.uk and about other artsscience projects funded by the sponsors of this exhibition, the Wellcome Trust, www.wellcome.ac.uk It is more than a year since the foot and mouth crisis began, leading to the slaughter of thousands of animals, and confining some children to their farms, making them miss weeks of schooling. The Everyman Theatre in Gloucester, in the heart of a rural area, has responded to the aftermath with a project called Banishing the Shadow of Foot and Mouth. For 10 weeks, two theatre practitioners have spent two hours a week in each of five primary schools working on performance pieces to be staged in community venues near the schools. On Sunday evening, all five will be brought together in a grand finale, with professional music and designs.

Each school’s response will be unique - one, for instance, telling the story of an evil family called Foot And Mouth, another drawing on personal experience, and another taking inspiration from Orwell’s Animal Farm. Information: 01242 512513, ext 255.

Congratulations to students of John Smeaton school in Leeds. Their eight-minute film about studying at the university there, Rock Solid, has so impressed professor Bruce Yardley of the school of earth sciences that it is to be used to promote his department’s courses in schools and colleges in the UK and in the United States. For copies of the CD, tel: 0113 343 6673.

Heather Neill