The Identity Project was a nine-month season of activity from the Wellcome Trust, including a major exhibition and diverse events presented in Wellcome Collection, plus exhibitions, live events and films at other venues across the UK. The season explored scientific and social perspectives of identity - historic and contemporary - to encourage debate and discussion and to ask how well we will ever be able to know ourselves.

In June 2000, the first draft of the Human Genome Project was published. The 'book of life' promised greater scientific insight into our identity than ever before. The next month, riding a wave of TV programmes purporting to show us our 'real' selves and a rising trend for people to make their private identities public through the media or the internet, the first UK series of Big Brother aired - attracting millions of viewers.

As we reached the tenth anniversaries of these two very different symbols of the past decade, we asked which has taught us more about who we are? Through Wellcome Collection's exhibition and events and through activities up and down the country we contemplated these questions and many more… and participants hopefully came away knowing a little more about themselves.

The Wellcome Trust (and Wellcome Collection)

The Wellcome Trust supports an enormous amount of research into genetics, including the Human Genome Project, generating more and more information about genetic identities and uncovering hundreds of genetic factors associated with health and disease. The Trust's Engaging Science grants programme offers over £3 million per year to support projects that aim to inform and inspire the public about biomedical science and its social contexts. Such projects are profiled as part of The Identity Project.

Part of the Wellcome Trust, Wellcome Collection is 'a free destination for the incurably curious'. Opening in June 2007, it looks at the theme of human identity from a multitude of perspectives - through temporary and permanent exhibits, events and tours.