The symposium is organised by members of staff in Warwick, often with external help. The organisers are free to invite participants from the world-wide mathematical community to work in Warwick during the year. There will be mathematicians, including the leading figures in the area, visiting Warwick throughout the year, a weekly programme of seminars, and various special events which act as focal points in the symposium. Typically a symposium attracts something like 200 participants each year, who stay in Warwick for periods ranging from one week to the full year, and there are three or four special events which take place in the University vacations. The aim of a symposium is to provide an informal research environment designed to stimulate interaction between the visitors and the resident mathematicians.
Workshops are smaller, shorter, and more specialised than symposia.
The aim of a workshop is to gather together a critical mass of mathematicians to work together in some quite specific area of mathematics. It could last a week or a month, and may involve as few as ten or as many as fifty participants. The MRC was founded in 1965, with the help of a grant from the Nuffield Foundation. This grant enabled the MRC to begin running research symposia, and each year since 1965 there has been a symposium in some area of mathematics. The programme of workshops has developed over recent years as a means of expanding and diversifying the programme of the MRC and in response to the increasing demand to put on interactive research activities of the kind the MRC specialises in.