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There are three core objectives for the project, 1) To promote tissue engineering in a social context by making the scientific process and the individual donors part of a public dialogue. 2) To create an artifact (rings) from bone by tissue engineering to provide a focus for the public dialogue. 3) To provide opportunities (an event, exhibition and website) for public audiences to engage with tissue engineering in its social context.The project deliverables occur as the project develops. There is an initial, widely publicised live evening debate at the Dana Centre, a new educational centre, and part of the London Science Museum in Kensington. This introduces the project to a live audience of up to 150 young professionals, with a live broadcast on the intemet. The role of this event is to stimulate a lively debate. It concentrates on placing tissue engineering as scientific process, within a socao-cultural context by introducing the couple who are participating in the project, that is donating their bone cells for laboratory growth and subsequent use as a material in the design of rings to represent their commitment. The event is designed for maximum impact and visibility, and with a critical and responsible tone. Subsequent to the live event, the design phase of the project is then documented online. This documentation includes 2 strands. The first is documentary material, photographic and video, focusing on the selected couple. The second strand includes images from the design stages, and the laboratory processes which lead up to the construction of the rings. New material is added to the website as it is generated, to produce a continually fresh and ongoing dialogue with the public. This also gives the project with an opportunity to create a database of individuals for evaluation. This phase is followed by the exhibition at Guys hospital, which includes high quality wall mounted photos of the project process, a cabinet housing the finished rings and related materials, an interactive presentation with video, text and images chronicling the process in more depth, and a free booklet to take away which includes a response questionnaire. The aim of the exhibition is to again foreground a hi-tech scientific process in an understandable, and resonant human-centred context. It aims to challenge the audience, by asking ethical and personal questions about how science process relates to our daily requirements, habits and desires, without producing the elements of hysteria and dogma which define most news-media treatments of biotechnology.With recent advancements in tissue engineering, human bone is being grown outside of a donors body. Our tissue has become a material which can be grown. Damaged or worn areas of bone can be replaced. Skin grafts and organ transplants have been a part of our understanding of medical science for some years now But growing bone outside the body is an intriguing concept that goes beyond science into metaphysics and symbolism. If bone has traditions of ceremony, of death and magic, living bone transforms the meaning of this material. This project aims to promote tissue engineering in a broad social and ethical context.How could we treat lab grown bone not as a material for repair, or of a symbol of deterioration, but to exploit its relationship with the living donor? This project focusses on how we adorn our body with jewellery. The ring in particular, a symbol of our relationship with another person, is a richly suggestive object. Bringing together materials scientists from Kings College London and designers based at the Royal College of art, a pair of rings will be made. These rings will use silver and gold, but also include laboratory-grown bone from two donors; a couple selected from the public. The rings will then be exchanged by the couple as a symbol of their relationship, each wearing the body of their lover on their finger. What are their reasons for becoming involved in the project? How does this
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