BIG e-news: Issue 7 - September 2008

September has arrived – I can’t quite believe the how quickly the year has gone, although it’s been a busy one behind the scenes at BIG, improving our services to members.

This year’s BIG Event in Wrexham was another great success and the professional, yet relaxed style combined with the glorious weather reminded me of the very first BIG Events at Herstmonceux (eek I’m showing my age now!) Anyway, there are some lovely images capturing the essence of the Event on the website so take a sneaky peek if you can.

Sarah Vining
BIG Administrator

BIG EVENT 2008

Savita Custead, BIG Event Coordinator

The BIG Event 2008 was held at Techniquest@NEWI in July, and was a success with delegates, speakers, hosts, and special guests.

It was the biggest event to date – with the most number of organisations attending, highest number of delegates, and the largest and most varied programme. The BIG executive extends special thanks to the staff and volunteers at Techniquest@NEWI who worked overtime to provide an amazing experience for all those attending – many delegates rated this year their favourite event to date.

Sessions covered a broad range of topics including management, improving practice in the field, education and programming. Delegates and visitors to the science centre enjoyed science shows from 8 organisations from right across the UK. Of course, a great deal of learning took place between the sessions as delegates made new contacts, created new projects and bounced ideas off each other.

Returning to its roots from Herstmonceux days, the event included a outdoor component with a popular session on outdoor demos, busking at the local Sainsbury’s, and making bubbles in the open air.

The BIG Exec is already planning for next year’s event, likely to be held in July 2009. Venue details will be released in October, and many BIG members have already submitted ideas for sessions, social events and programmes. We look forward to seeing you next year and hearing any feedback on 2008 or ideas for 2009 in the meantime. Keep in touch on the BIG website at www.big.uk.com and don’t forget to login to BIG Chat and share your ideas with the BIG community!

A NEWBIE LURKER AT THE BIG EVENT

Jo Harris, Programmes Officer, Techniquest

Having been lurker on BIG Chat for many years when the opportunity to attend the BIG Event 2008 in Wrexham presented itself I jumped at the chance.

In return for my attendance I was asked to submit a proposal for a session. There was no question for me, I wanted to find out how everyone else did some of the tasks that I struggled with. Working in my little corner of South Wales I have developed my own theories of how to do things but what did everyone else do? Is there some “right way” of doing this? This led to the development of my discussion session on training presenters.

My session ended up being scheduled to be the first session of the first day of my first event but undaunted (or nearly undaunted) I set off through Wales to meet all these people who I had been reading about for years. Boy, was I in for a treat. I had no concept how many people there were out there who thought like me, who got excited by bubbles (or Bubblz?!) and just wanted to enthuse the whole wide world. I was also pleasantly surprised by how similar a lot of our conclusions were but also by how individual we all were.

For me these were the two overarching philosophical themes to the Event; collaboration and individuality. Now these may seem like two juxtaposed positions but they actually very complementary. As a presenter trainer one of my mantras is that I want to train people to be themselves. That is to take enthusiastic individuals and give them the skills and the confidence to pass that enthusiasm on. To develop a community of shared ideas and best practice but ultimately to encourage individuality. How can we hope to show science as a human activity, accessible to all and rooted in human experience without expressing our individuality?

Never have I met a bunch of people who embody this sentiment more than the BIG membership. I would like to suggest a BIG motto, if such a thing would be appropriate. It’s one of my favourite quotes:

“Never doubt that a small group of like minded individuals can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has.” - Margaret Mead

So my message is simple, for those who attend the BIG Event, it was amazing to meet you, keep up the good work, and for those who haven’t yet had the time, or motivation, then go, you won’t regret it!

NEWS FLASH!

We are pleased to announce that there is now UK science festivals calendar on the BIG website. We’d like this to be as comprehensive as possible so if something is incorrect or missing, please let me know.

A GRAND TOUR

Helen Lloyd, science made simple

A few months back, I headed off to North America with a view to setting up a transatlantic presenter exchange programme. 5 weeks, 4 time zones, 9 science centres, 4 flights, 5 trains, 3 buses and 3 hitches later I’m back, with lots to get going on!

I’ve been interested in short-term working in Canada or the US for a while now, just to get a different perspective on science communication and see how our friends the other side of the pond approach things. Instead of heading off into the unknown I thought I’d test the water and see whether science centres and outreach projects out there were interested in sending their staff over here for some professional development and a new outlook on things! I arranged meetings at the New York Hall of Science, Science North and Dynamic Earth in Sudbury, Canada, Ontario Science Centre, Vancouver Science Centre, Pacific Science Centre in Seattle, the Field Museum in Chicago and The Science Museum of Minnesota in St Paul. The most striking thing I found was that everybody was incredibly keen to meet me and very excited about the prospect of a presenter exchange. Science presenters are often neglected in the training and development schemes at science centres, as they are often young, casual or short-term staff who the organisation do not see as a long-term investment. However the general view was that with this kind of professional development opportunity, staff would be retained for longer and would develop into other roles within the centre as well.

Travelling round and talking to people, I realised that we are all doing the same sort of thing, with the same challenges, and the same moments of overwhelming satisfaction! Sure, maybe we at science made simple don’t have to reach tiny outlying communities which are cut off by snow for six months of the year, and we rarely take our shows out in bushplanes, but we are still doing the same things when we get there – fast-paced, interactive science shows which get the audience thinking about and enjoying science and engineering in their own lives. We also face the same bureaucratic problems – where does the next round of funding come from? How can you prevent staff burn-out when you’re asking them to travel for weeks at a time? Is there actually a bookings system that does everything you need it to? I’m not sure what the answers are, but perhaps we can learn from each other, and make sure we don’t keep recreating the wheel.

All the places I visited were very different from each other in many ways – I saw exhibits that I have never seen in a UK science centre, including some beautiful science-art exhibits. I was particularly struck by an exhibit at the Ontario Science Centre where your picture was taken by a helper, and then you saw your face being made with a series of bubbles in tubes. I’m not entirely sure what the science message was, but I was captivated! I also saw outreach in action at the Pacific Science Centre, when I went to a local school to watch a liquid nitrogen show and was reminded again that children are pretty much the same everywhere – they find the same things exciting, scary and funny! One evening I went to an adults only science evening – ‘Science with a Twist – Wino Dino!’. The science connection was fairly loose – celebrating the dinosaurs exhibit by holding a wine tasting in it with a lecture from a sommelier about how to taste wine. It was great fun though, and the science centre’s aim is not to be imparting hard science at these events, but to make the science centre part of the community, and get people to have a sense of place there.

As well as all the meetings and working stuff, I managed to get a great holiday as well – I visited a friend in New York and got some walking done in the Rockies. But what happens next? Well, I’m currently trying to come up with a proposal that’s a lot bigger than my original acorn of an idea – perhaps some kind of international scheme that centres and organisations can be members of and encourage professional development through presenter exchange. I’m very interested in investigating the possibility of a rotational scheme such as the European one Wendy Sadler wrote about in the last BIG News. I’m now looking for people in the UK who would be interested in being part of such a scheme as well. What it’ll turn into I couldn’t say at the moment, but if you’re interested in sending a presenter abroad and getting someone different for a month or so in exchange, please get in touch with me and I’ll keep you posted about any progress we make!

THE FUNNY SIDE OF SCIENCE

Dean Burnett PhD, Neuroscientist

Despite having no formal training or role in science communication, I find myself talking to the general public about science on a regular basis. This is because for the last three years I have been the UK’s only (according to my research) Stand-Up Comedy Neuroscientist.

People often asked if I use science in my sets, and are generally surprised when I say yes. This is because science, as a subject, is not often associated with humour. This got me to thinking, many subjects are often used in comedy (relationships, air travel, nostalgia), but is this due to the higher likelihood of shared experiences, or are some subjects simply funnier than others? As any good scientist would do, I decided to conduct an experiment.

Two years ago, I started what I call ‘The Alpha(bet) Project’. The aim was to write a 10 minute set for each letter of the alphabet, where each letter is represented by a subject beginning with that letter, and each subject is supplied by a big name comedian that I personally harassed into making a suggestion. Two years later, it’s nearly complete. After getting suggestions from numerous award winning comedians and stars of stage, film, TV and radio, I now have 26 subjects that I have been attempting to make funny by scientifically analysing them in my particular style. They range from the technical (e.g. anaphylactic shock, osmosis, duality) to the surreal (e.g. fish, gargoyles) to the downright filthy (e.g. use your imagination).

It is my intention to demonstrate my ‘results’ in the form of a one hour show, where audience members select the sets at random. If I can ever raise the money, I hope to take this to the Edinburgh Fringe festival. It may be unsuccessful, but it’s certainly an original approach to communicating with the general public about science.

If any BIG members out there can help me expand my involvement with science communication please get in touch! garwboydean@hotmail.com

THEATRESCIENCE INDIA

Jeff Teare, Theatrescience

THEATRESCIENCE is a theatre company that I formed in 2004 in conjunction with my colleague Rebecca Gould.

Among other things, it uses drama and theatre to explore the politics, economics, ethics and emotions of biomedical science. It’s not about teaching science, though that does tend to happen along the way, but it is about ‘what it means to be human in the early twentieth century’. In 2006 THEATRESCIENCE began working in India and formed partnerships with The Creative Arts (TCA) in Kolkata and the Artistes’ Repertory Theatre (ART) in Bangalore. In October 2007 we jointly held a festival in Bangalore featuring play-readings of commissioned new scripts, science seminars, drama workshops, public discussions and performances of two works-in-progress by the Indian companies.

In July 2008 THEATRESCIENCE brought TCA and ART to London to perform more developed versions of their shows at the Lilian Baylis Studio Theatre. Play-readings and workshops were also held at the Soho Theatre. TCA’s ‘Crab Soup’ is about the potential social effects of the use of an anti-HIV vaginal gel currently being developed in India. ART’s ‘The Invisible River’ looks at bacteriophage activity in the Ganges and how science could possibly be used to promote Hindu belief in the divinity of that river. The play-readings were of ‘Idiot Wind’ by Farhad Sorabjee, dealing with Indian attitudes to autism, and Bad Blood Blues by Paul Sirett, looking at the conduct of drug trials in West Africa. All the performances and play-readings were followed by public discussions about the issues involved. The workshops were concerned with Indian attitudes to evolution and women’s experience of living with HIV in India. It is hoped to develop these subjects into theatre pieces in 2009. More information, and video, is available on our website (www.theatrescience.org) or videos are also posted on YouTube.

SCIENCE COMMUNICATION 1610-STYLE

Richard Ellam

Exeter City has several museums. One of these is St Nicholas’ Priory, which was built in the twelfth century. Following the dissolution of the monasteries in the late 1530s St Nick’s became, for a hundred and fifty years, one of the swankiest addresses in the City.

Today it is preserved and open to the public as a late Tudor house furnished as it would have been about the year 1600. During the summer holidays the museum service runs regular workshops on aspects of Tudor and Stuart life and this year they decided to run some science workshops as part of this programme for the first time. These workshops attract the usual family audience, with a preponderance of pre-teenage children.

I was given the task of preparing and presenting two different shows, one on the work of Galileo, and the other on ships, navigation and voyages of discovery. I was required to present these in costume (provided by the museum, who employ an education officer who is the same size and shape as me), something I have never done before, so what follows is a brief account of how I developed these shows.

Photo right: Dr Richard Baskerville - an Exeter physician of the early Stewart period - ready to demonstrate the latest wonders newly found out by the most learned and excellent Signior Galileo.

Content was always going to be the easy bit: I have an existing show about navigation, Sun, Sea and Sextants, which could be adapted by adding more about compasses and leaving out the bit about sextants, an Eighteenth Century invention. Curiously I was able to talk about longitude, because even though mariners were unable to find their longitude at sea until the chronometer came along abut 1760 the principle of using time differences to measure east-west positions was well known by about 1600. For the Galileo show I chose to focus on his work on falling bodies, pendulums, and his astronomical discoveries (mountains on the Moon, phases of Venus, satellites of Jupiter) and their cosmological implications. By setting my presentation in the year 1613, when Galileo published these discoveries I was able to avoid getting involved in any discussion of the row with the Roman Catholic Church, which did not erupt until three years later. Galileo’s trial is an interesting episode in the history of science, but a bit advanced for ten-year-olds!

Presentation was going to be rather more challenging. Although Galileo’s lectures were reckoned to be brilliant, and illustrated with experiments, I have no idea how, or if, public lectures were presented four hundred years ago. I suspect that they were mostly pretty boring, so authenticity went out to be replaced by modern audience participation.

Props however needed to be made or modified to look the part. There were no plastics, aluminium or drawn metal bars 400 years ago, no electronics and’ also very few screws - because these had to be made one at a time by hand and so cost a huge amount per each. In Shakespeare’s day there was no “poppyng downe to Bee and Cue for a pakcet of woodscrues”. So a quantity of oak was duly hacked about and pegged together with dowels to make an inclined plane to demonstrate acceleration due to gravity, an authentic looking Galilean telescope cobbled up from cardboard tube and brown paper and a cross-staff and other navigational gizmos of the period made from hardwoods and arranged to work with locking wedges, not screws. Visual aids couldn’t be PowerPoint - so I made some A3 display cards using Galileo’s own drawings downloaded from the internet, enlarged and printed on cartridge paper. These I introduced as being ‘copies made with mine own hand of sketches by Seignior Galileo’ - which is kind of true, but not in the way it would be understood four hundred years ago.

Thus prepared I set off for Exeter to strut my stuff in public and to confront the final part of the puzzle: how to give a performance which both communicated the science effectively and had enough period flavour to be convincing.’ I decided early on the project that as I would be wearing an accurately reconstructed costume I would give my performance in character, and that I would only refer to things that (as far as I knew) an early seventeenth century natural’ philosopher would know about. Fortunately I have some background knowledge of the Tudor and Stuart period outside its science which I could draw on to provide colour for my performance.

Language could be a problem: I wasn’t going to speak like a Shakespeare play, but then Shakespeare didn’t speak to his mates like that, either. In the end I decided to adopt a slightly more formal style than I’d use if presenting in a modern context and to let a few deliberately archaic constructions and words creep into my speech as naturally as I could. This approach seems, from feedback received, to have been successful and convincing. Ignoring the modern age if it intruded worked well. When the inevitable mobile phone rang half way through my explaining about Galileo’s optics and I reacted by stopping and asking ‘what manner of strange music is that I got an appreciative laugh and the offending phone was quickly switched off!

Would I do this again? Absolutely: if the demand is there I would be very keen to include a costumed show about Galileo’s discoveries in my repertoire. The navigation stuff was I think less successful, mainly because it is much harder conceptually. What advice would I offer from my great experience of two days as a costumed science interpreter? Doing shows in period and in costume is much harder than just doing some science tricks in front of an audience. To pull it off you have to be absolutely on top of the science, and you have to understand its historical context, and then, on top of all you need to be a confident performer who can convincingly adopt a historical persona. Costumed science interpretation probably isn’t everyone’s thing, but it’s an interesting challenge if you’ve got the confidence and knowledge to pull it off.

WHAT'S NEW PUSSYCAT?

Elin Roberts has moved to Newcastle as Education Manager at the Centre for Life, covering for Jenny Dockett’s maternity leave… good luck Jenny for the new arrival…Also congratulations to Joy Todd and Rachel Mason who are both expecting expansions to their families at the end of the year...

Are you or your colleagues on the move? Let us know who's doing what and we will let the members know.

JOB VACANCIES - TIME FOR A CHANGE

There are lots of exciting jobs up for grabs out there on the BIG website. Take a look or add your own vacancy - free of charge. Some of the current vacancies include a STEM & SEAs Co-ordinator at Techniquest@NEWI, Wrexham and an Evaluation consultant for the Open University.

With best wishes from the BIG Executive 2008-09

Noel Jackson, Chair
James Piercy, Vice-Chair
Rachel Mason, Treasurer
Natasha Verniquet, Secretary
and Sarah Vining, Administrator

Contact BIG