Showtime! Fun Palaces – bringing science and the arts to the community

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Standing behind the counter of Cheltenham Library one Saturday, a colleague beamed at me “Let’s do a Fun Palace”. I had no idea what she was on about. Was she suggesting a new craze I hadn’t heard of? Hmmm, she already works as a Science Communicator so was it something along those lines? My eyes darted around looking for hints – I came clean, I hadn’t the foggiest idea.

Turns out Fun Palaces is an international campaign, bringing science, art, craft and tech together for one weekend a year, free for everyone and run by the community. Libraries are community hubs. In the Gloucestershire service, we offer more than books. A Fun Palace fits in well here.

Once I knew about Fun Palaces, I enthusiastically agreed to help since it tied in to the skills I had been developing on the Science Communication MSc here at UWE. As long as it could wait until after all my assessments were handed in of course. My colleague wrote a proposal, we were given the ‘nod’, and away we went.

QueationSo which modules and skills from the MSc were invaluable for the event? I cannot decide. I filled this post with important aspects of the course, then realised no one wanted to read a thesis on this. Basically, I used skills learnt from every module.

The experiences provided by Science in Public Spaces (‘We the Curious’, the Explorer Dome, training by VOX and a self-selected visit to one of the Science Museum ‘Lates’) were extremely useful in highlighting how some ideas work well in some spaces and for some audiences, but not others. It also provided practical skills via the BoxEd project. Writing Science came in handy when it came to publishing promotional tweets, producing marketing materials and writing a last-minute media release. The compulsory modules provided an understanding of audiences, whether people feel able to engage in STEM and how you can get around those who feel they can’t, and the Two Cultures debate.

Most of you will probably be shouting at your screens “Get to the Fun Palace already”. I hear you. Continue reading “Showtime! Fun Palaces – bringing science and the arts to the community”

Engaging with strangers

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 What happens when social scientists and natural scientists start to work together? Clare Wilkinson summarises her recent research.

As a social scientist whose research has spanned a range of scientific issues, from genetics, to nanotechnologies, robotics to the environment, I’ve always been intrigued to think about the roles that social scientists play when they are working in cross or interdisciplinary settings. A few years ago, with the support of some funding from the British Academy I had the opportunity to consider some of those roles, as well as their benefits and challenges with a small group of interviewees based here in the UK.

Why then? It was a timely opportunity to talk to social scientists about these topics. The social science community was really starting to consider how it demonstrated impact, serves a real purpose and has a role to play in the types of large-scale interdisciplinary research projects that now seem so common. Examples like The Campaign for Social Science and the LSE Impact blog were spurring social scientists to think critically about disciplinary relationships and influence, and I was interested to explore some of these themes within this small piece of research.

Social scientists found working in the field inspiring, thought provoking and fascinating… they also expressed challenges in collaboration.

21 social scientists participated in the interviews, and they were working at a variety of career stages and in a range of different areas associated to science and technology. It was clear from the data that they found working in the field inspiring, thought provoking and fascinating, and that collaborating with scientists is often essential when you are interested in some of the social ramifications science potentially creates. However, they also expressed challenges in collaboration. Creating shared languages and understandings of the differing disciplinary approaches was often the most obvious, and this is of course not isolated to working with scientists, the language and approaches used in the social sciences can often be as daunting to ‘outsiders’ as that used in any other academic field.

Collaboration works best when it is given the time, trust and respect to be nurtured and cherished.

What really came across in the data though was that collaboration works best when it is given the time, trust and respect to be nurtured and cherished. When assumptions around what a disciplinary perspective might provide could be set aside, by both parties, there were opportunities to create fruitful and more creative collaborations. At a time when talk of ‘the two cultures’ is often revisited (see, for example, the recent British Science Association collection of essays Science: Not just for scientists which has some fascinating reflections on this age old argument) the paper concludes that for the best collaborative opportunities we don’t need ‘shotgun ceremonies’ or ‘brief encounters’ but more sustainable relationships over time.

Clare Wilkinson is an Associate Professor in the SCU at UWE.

You can read the research article on which this post is based in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, 34 (3-4). A copy is also available via the UWE Research Repository. With thanks to the British Academy [SG-54670].

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