BIG e-news: Issue 6 - 1st June 2008

As the weather warms up, so does conference activity for the BIG event with registration emails clogging up our inboxes and payments flooding in. Places have filled more rapidly this year than any other. If you get a last-minute urge to grab one of the last remaining places in Wrexham it's not too late to book your place.

The BIG executive committee has worked hard this year to get new benefits for its members. We thank you for your support and hope you will continue it by renewing your subscription when, for most of you, it expires in July.

Sarah Vining, BIG Administrator

Big Event 2008 programme update

Savita Custead, BIG Event Organiser

We have a fantastic programme lined up for this year’s conference, including sessions targeted to all interactive professionals, including:

Management – including sessions on measuring impact, successful partnerships, and a review of public engagement

Front line staff – including sessions on career development, busking, and working with media and experts

Education staff – including previews of new shows and sessions on social inclusion, mentoring volunteers and evaluation

Exhibit staff – including sessions on practical building, data capture in the exhibition, and props

Join staff from 43 organizations for a great event of learning, sharing and networking, including At-Bristol, British Association for the Advancement of Science, Camera Obscura & World of Illusions, Centre for Alternative Technology, Centre for Life, Concept Shed, Edinburgh Science Festival, Eureka, ExplorerDome, Hands-On Science, Inspire, Institute of Physics, Intech, L M Interactive, Medical Research Council, MOSI, National Museums Scotland, Our Dynamic Earth, Physikanten & Co, Royal Institution, science made simple, Science Shows for Schools, Sensation, Stoke-on-Trent Museums, Techniquest, The Oxford Trust, think differently, Thinktank, UKAEA Culham, University of the West of England, Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute.

BIG Event page and registration form

Executive Committee nominations

We will be looking for new members to join the BIG Executive Committee 2008-09 from July.

If you are interested in standing as an officer or as a regional convenor, please download a nomination form (RTF file) and return to:

James Piercy, Big Secretary
303 Dereham Road, Norwich NR2 3TJ
james@sciencemadesimple.co.uk

All nominations must be received by June 12th 2008 and elections will be held at the AGM at Techniquest NEWI on Thursday 24 July 2008 at 13.00.

My secret life

Which BIG Exec member...

... can be found doing improvisation in arts centres?

... got married twice in one year?

... asked Carol Vorderman to give it a shake?

... has shaken hands with a Sheik?

... sings in a rock and soul band?

Answers can be found here.

Do you have a secret to share? Please submit your secret life stories to admin@big.uk.com for the next issue.

Fabricators Event

Ian Simmons, Centre for Life

It’s now been over five years since BIG last ran a Fabricators’ Event (in 2002 in Bristol, if memory serves me well), which may be indicative of the way our sector is moving culturally.

BIG’s emphasis has moved more in the direction of science shows and related communication events and away from exhibits, particularly as the number of centres running their own exhibit building facilities has declined vertiginously since the 90s. Snibston, Satrosphere, Light on Science, the Science Museum, Xperiment and The Bristol Exploratory have all closed or drastically reduced the scope of their workshops, leaving only Science Projects, Intech, Techniquest and At-Bristol with facilities of any consequence, plus a few doughty independents, with more general exhibition design and special effect companies providing far more exhibits than they once did. This means there are fewer people in the business who overtly deal with exhibit development and this has been compounded by the parlous financial situation many centres find themselves in. Most only have the money to operate day to day, if they are lucky, so very little is available to invest in new exhibits or exhibitions, with the end result that we tend towards fairly set exhibitions, enlivened by an array of energetic programming.

Originally fabricators was a way for people in exhibit workshops to get together and spend 4-5 days trying out speculative ideas that didn't fit with what they needed to do at work, but that might contribute to the pool of exhibits around - quite a few exhibits that are now science centre regulars came about this way - or for people more involved in the admin side to have a go at exhibit making. There was always an element of these events being useful for new people to get an understanding of how to think about exhibits - I only began to grasp how to think up good exhibits after working with Paul Orselli on a liquid parabola exhibit at the 1989 fabricators (pre-BIG), and the later ones were more overtly about this as more new people entered the field.

I believe it is vital to continue to run such events as most places now do not have in-house exhibit building. To be able to successfully come up with good new interactive exhibit ideas that really work you need to understand the interaction between the science to be communicated, the audience and the engineering and the best way to do this is to try it yourself, and this is vital even if, like me, you have limited craft skills and have always sat in an office commissioning exhibits from others. Without that understanding exhibit builders won't make decent exhibits, but those involved in commissioning them will also find it a lot harder to understand whether the people they commission can deliver what they claim, and also find it harder to have constructive discussion with contractors to hone the ideas into successful exhibits.

Actually making an exhibit is particularly helpful in understanding how to make an idea satisfyingly open ended, freeing thinking from narrow 'learning goal' oriented approaches that lead to audience dissatisfaction and one-visit galleries. Currently too many UK centres have narrative 'museum lite' galleries where interactives are just there as allegories or illustrations. In theory at least this can be done better by museums, which have the added benefit of collections, which begs the question as to why we need science centres anyway. To secure long-term survival centres need to move away from this and emphasise pure interactivity and a discrete identity while at the same time not simply recycling cookbook exhibits, but pushing the field forward. To make this work the understanding that fabricators helps develop needs to be far more widespread than it currently is. We need to revive Fabricators as a BIG tradition to balance the more programme-oriented Event, and It may need to be renamed to make it more appropriate for modern audiences, e.g. “Understanding Exhibit Development” or similar, but it is something that we’ll all benefit from as in the end, a science centre is only as good as its exhibits.

Inertia Demo

Ben Craven, Freelance Science Communicator

This is a simple, cheap, and appealing demonstration that (if you like making points) makes a point about inertia, and (if you like raising laughs) usually raises at least one laugh. I don’t know who invented it.

The demo

What happens
A volunteer dons a hard hat with a spike on the top of it. You balance a counterweighted placard on the spike. The visible side of the placard makes the audience wonder what’s on the back. You ask the volunteer to turn around so that people can see the back of the placard. The volunteer turns around, but the placard doesn’t! This generally gets a giggle. After a few more fruitless attempts, you ask the volunteer what they need to do to turn the placard around. They give the side of the placard a gentle nudge, and it turns around to reveal what’s on the back.

The science
The spike on the helmet makes a very good pivot for the placard. The volunteer is unable to transmit a turning force (a torque or moment) to the board through the spike. Therefore, when they turn, the board doesn’t. In order to make something turn, you need to apply a force to it that is to one side of its centre of mass. The volunteer can easily do this by pushing the side of the board.

What’s on the placard?
It could be anything you like. I use a corny two-part joke.

How to make it

The helmet
You will need: a hard hat, a bolt about 30mm long, a corresponding nut and 2 washers. Drill a hole in the middle of the top of the hard hat. Drop a washer onto the bolt, and insert it through the hole from inside the hat. Drop another washer onto the protruding part of the bolt, add the nut and tighten. File or grind a point on the bolt (no need for it to be very sharp). You now have a hat with a spike on top.

The placard
All sorts of methods and materials would work. I used a piece of plywood about 3mm by 600mm by 400mm, strips of wood about 15 mm square section, and various nuts, bolts, and washers. The diagram gives the general idea. Important points are:

• The bottom edge of the board must be stiffened. I routed a groove along one of the strips of wood and glued the board into it.
• You need a central recess on the underside of the stiffening strip, to put the spike of the helmet into. A semicircular router cutter makes a neat hemispherical pit, but a rough hole made with a large drill (much wider than the spike) would probably do.
• The counterweights need to be heavy enough so that the board balances upright when it is placed on the helmet spike. If you make them no thicker than the arms, you’ll be able to swivel the arms over the board for easier storage and transport.
• The arms for the counterweights should be fitted on opposite faces of the board as shown. This helps it to balance fore and aft.

Safety

Make sure that the hat is correctly adjusted for the wearer. You may choose to round or even pad the lower edge of the board, but as the volunteer is wearing a hard hat this may be excessive. Do not on any account be tempted to attach the spike to the board and make the recess in the helmet.

Don’t forget your volunteer!

They can’t see either side of the board, and they may be unaware that the board stays still as they turn. Remember to keep them in the picture.

Do try this one at home, folks

You can do a domestic version of this demo by cooking any kind of stew or sauce based dish in a saucepan. Enjoy the food, scrape out the pan as well as you can with a spoon, and then fill it with water and leave overnight. In the morning, various repellent items of detritus will be floating on the surface – these act as tracers for the movement of the water. Pick up the pan and turn around on the spot. The water (as indicated by the debris) turns inside the pan! But watch carefully: you will see that, relative to the room, the water actually stays still while the pan rotates about it. (If the pan is too dirty, the food forms a coherent raft that turns with the pan, ruining the whole experiment).

Science Communication Masterclass, July 2008
10% discount for BIG members!

Following the success of the first Masterclass in Science Communication, run by the University of the West of England, we would like to invite you to register for the next Masterclass. This will run from the 7-11th of July 2008.

The Masterclass is a five-day intensive course in Science Communication and draws on the existing expertise of the team that delivers UWE's popular and practical Masters in Science Communication. It has been designed to provide professional development in the field of Science Communication.

Closing date for registration is 6 June 2008

For further details please see the Masterclass web page

Please feel free to pass the invitation to other colleagues who might be interested.

A day in the life...

Name: Tania Johnston
Job: Education Officer at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, Visitor Centre

A typical day at work consists of: lots and lots of different things in this job. One day I may leave the house at 7am to go out to a school for outreach and only be in the office for an hour at the end of the day, the next day I could be desk-bound for the best part of the day organising marketing for events, dealing with PR enquiries or organising staff for other events. It really depends from day-to-day.

What got you into this career?

I actually kind of fell into a career in science communication back in 2002. I had finished my degree and had been working as an analytical chemist for about a year…which really was enough for me! I had started to look around for possible PhDs and luckily stumbled upon a job advert with the University of Edinburgh, School of Chemistry – they were looking for 2 science communicators to take chemistry activities to rural areas in Scotland…what a fantastic job that turned out to be.

What is the best thing about your job?

Definitely the variety. I can’t see me doing too well in a standard 9-5 office job - in fact I’ve never had one – so this job suits me down to the ground.

... and the worst?

Early morning rises for outreach trips – I’m really not a morning person!

What is your favourite meal?

That is such a difficult question. Macaroni cheese comes high on my list of favourite meals but I’m not sure if it’s my all time favourite.

What is your favourite smell?

Cinnamon, especially when it’s in some sort of cake being baked, which I will then get to eat!

What talents do you possess?

I like to think I possess the talent of being able to communicate with people of all different ages, and backgrounds (obviously very helpful in this line of work but quite nice generally to have this talent!). Other talents I possess include speaking Italian and snowboarding, badly!

What talents would you like to possess?

I’d really like to be able to speak French better – I’ve got a terrible Scottish accent which comes through when I speak French at the moment.

Which actor do you think should play you in the film of your life?

I’m going to go with Cameron Diaz – not because I think she looks anything like me but because she seems like a fun kind of person who is good at doing comedy roles!

Which living person do you most admire and why?

I have thought so long and hard about this one and I still can’t narrow it down to one single person…there are many people I admire. There are a number of my close friends whom I admire very much.

Most beautiful place on earth?

I would have to say the Scottish Highlands…whatever the weather!

What is your Motto for life?

Live life to the full!

What’s new?

Congratulations to Karen Bultitude on her recent marriage ... James Piercy has moved on from Inspire and joined the sciencemadesimple team as their man in the east, delivering shows, training and consultancy ... Mark Lewney and Sarah Vining are pleased to announce the birth of their second son, Billy on Easter Day ...

Are you happy to welcome a new member of the team or excited to be starting a new challenge yourself? Send through the details and we'll let the rest of the BIG membership know.

Presenter exchange – European style

Wendy Sadler, science made simple

Way back in the annals of history BIG used to run a presenter exchange – a fantastic way for those presenting science shows to get a chance to perform their shows in a different venue and in return get a new presenter come to them with a new show.

It was a great way for science centres to exchange ideas, and for presenters to get the rare opportunity to meet each other and share ideas. The science centre also got a special event out of it that they could market to visitors as a ‘one off’ attraction.

I remember a very pleasant weekend doing Bernoulli shows at INSPIRE in Norwich and in exchange Techniquest enjoyed the skills of James Piercy playing with his food for the weekend. Somewhere along the way the idea fell down but recently I was asked to deliver a presentation at the EUSCEA event in Prague and I discovered a much bigger initiative that works on a similar format.

EUSCEA, the European Science Events Association (www.euscea.org) is the European organisation for Science Events. Nearly a hundred science events have evolved all over Europe, from Cyprus to Iceland, from Hungary to Portugal and more are on their way. EUSCEA was formed to exchange ideas and experiences, to communicate across borders and to develop new ways of funding and marketing Science Communication Events in Europe.

In April I was asked to talk at this event (at a beautiful Chateau in Liblice, Near Prague) about our ‘visualise’ theatre show and the research we have done about science demonstrations and long-term impact. I was thrilled to discover that this was a group of people not unlike those you would meet at a BIG event – and when I set them the challenge of breathing new life into old demos (all without words) we had some astoundingly creative solutions.

During the other sessions I discovered more about the recent EUSCEA ‘WONDERS’ project – a European funded collaboration between 30 organisations doing a two-year long presenter ‘carousel’ all across Europe. WONDERS (stands for Welcome to Observations, News, Demonstrations of European Research and Science) succeeded in doing not one or two but THIRTY presenter exchanges. Well actually I suppose they weren’t strictly exchanges but a rotation. It started with Strasbourg going to Tartu in Estonia, then Tartu to Dublin, and so on until finally Lisbon closed the loop by visiting Strasbourg.

Presentations had intriguing titles such as; ' Science and the Argentinian Tango', 'Rainbow as a Bridge to the Stars’, and 'Can you find a partner by the smell?’ Prizes were given during the final showcase event in Lisbon for ‘Most innovative ideas (‘The Jellyman code’ from Norway), Best communication of contemporary science (‘Hand drawn holograms’ from Portugal) and Audience Engagement (‘Down with gravity’ from Estonia).

By coincidence, the previous week in a science festival in Gothenburg, Sweden, I saw ‘Down with gravity’ in action and I stood back in awe of the ability of the two Estonian presenters to thoroughly amuse and engage a Swedish audience even though they were presenting in a second language and most of the audience were listening in their second language. I am humbled by the multi-linguistic skills of anyone who can do this!

Anyway, along with being in a rather interesting taxi crash – my lasting thought of the EUSCEA conference was that this is something BIG members should be involved in. Currently EUSCEA are applying for further funding from the EU to repeat the experience, and if that happens then more of us should really try and join in the carousel. As a warm up, perhaps we could try a mini-UK carousel of presenters round the BIG network with a finale of all the shows at next years BIG event. There could even be an awards ceremony and everything!

(Jonathan Sanderson knows something about organizing awards ceremonies I hear ...)

I also made sure that EUSCEA people knew about the prestigious BIG event and its Best Demo competition. One day I dream of a Eurovision style best demo equivalent – maybe without the Bucks Fizz skirts…OK, time to go on holiday I fear!

More information about EUSCEA and the WONDERS project can be found at www.euscea.org

All pictures Copyright © EUSCEA.

With best wishes from the BIG Executive 2008…

Noel Jackson, Chair
Karen Bultitute, Vice-Chair
Rachel Mason, Treasurer
James Piercy, Secretary
Savita Custead, Event Organiser
and Sarah Vining, Administrator

Contact BIG