Welcome to part 2 of my blog series about the Horses Inside Out Anatomy In Action Conference 2020.Today I would like to talk a little bit about Gillian Higgins, founder of Horses Inside Out and her Anatomy Exhibition that was a room at the conference available throughout the whole event to investigate and explore.
Gillian is an equine functional anatomist, biomechanist, therapy consultant, international lecturer, author and anatomical artist.
Gillian had created and hand painted many of the exhibits that were available to view, and lots of the exhibits were also interactive.
It was fascinating to be able to get up close and handle some genuine pony bones. A whole skeleton had been laid out to be viewed and handled, with some of the bones having been placed in the incorrect part of the skeleton and delegates were encouraged to spot the errors and correct them which was great fun.
'Marvin' the standing pony skeleton was also available to view with anatomical labels.
There were also models of the sacroiliac ligaments and iliopsoas muscle groups which were carefully labelled. Gillian has recently released a multi media book on this topic which I purchased at the conference.
The book has images of the bones and text included as well as a link to the supporting videos. I am yet to fully study the book but am looking forward to getting stuck into it!
Something I thought was really clever was a set of magnetic carpus and tarsus models. Magnets had been added into them so that you could stick the bones together to form the entire joint but you could also easily break it apart to view and feel each bone individually.
Other exhibits included 'Poseidon' - an anatomy model of the head as well as 'Leonardo' and 'Trooper' - painted models complete with anatomical keys. All of which were fantastic works of art as well as fabulous learning tools.
And speaking of works of art, Gillian has now created her own Skeleton Word Art - models and prints of the names of the bones skeleton shaped.
These are so beautiful that you could happily frame and hang them in your house but also extremely clever as they are of course anatomically correct.
If you are interested in horse anatomy, as I am, you could have spent the entire weekend just studying this exhibition.
I hope Gillian will be bringing some of these along to the conference in 2021!
Thank you for reading, I am excited to continue this blog series, next time I will be talking to you about speaker Vibeke Elbrond and what she shared with us at the conference.
Thanks so much to Horses Inside Out for allowing me access to their professional photographs.