Capturing and engaging different audiences: a busy British Science Week
British Science Week (BSW) in early March is always a busy one for the scientific among us who like outreach. Particularly so for me this year as the theme, 'change and adapt', fits my research interests superbly. Confusingly, BSW is actually longer than a week. So, over the course of two weeks, I took my activities to public events (a science festival and community drop-in event), and schools (primary and secondary).
Outreach depends on audience interaction, so the activities must always fit both the audience and location to give participants the maximum enjoyment possible! In this blog, I’ll give an overview of the differences in the activities I used and how they were designed to fit where they were used.
Public Events
My BSW was bookended by public events. These interactions are only a couple of minutes long, so any activities have to be easily explainable and quickly understood. I took two games to these events, loosely based on tabletop games commonly played by children: memory pairs and dobble. The memory game consisted of players having to match different microbes, discovering the diversity in this hidden world. In the dobble game, they had to match different parts of a cell between cards, gaining a greater appreciation of how complex our cells truly are.
The audiences engaged enthusiastically, helped along with plenty of stickers to give away and giant microbe plushies to cuddle. As all ages came along, my volunteers and I had a huge array of questions from all angles to field, which were also great preparation for vivas or talks. These included:
“What’s the point of microbes?”
“What are these furry bits [cilia]?”
“Do cells really have skeletons?!”
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that we learned a thing or two from the visitors as well – particularly about tardigrades.
Schools
Unlike audiences at public events, when presenting at a school you have an audience that can't go anywhere. This gives the option to go a little more in depth with the content and make the activities slightly more complicated. For these activities, which I presented virtually, I introduce cells and how they adapt to their environment. Pupils then played a game that I developed, where they take control of a cell's adaptive processes to survive the dangers which arise. If there’s time, they can then use supporting activity sheets.
Running events virtually also allows for presenting to several groups at once, as well as expanding potential geographic range. However, it comes at the cost of reduced interaction. I find school events, both online and in person, easier to run for primary schools. There's often more flexibility with times, which allows greater interaction. Once again, the questions don’t disappoint:
“What is your first cell?”
“How long do cells last for?”
“If a cell dies, does a new cell replace it?”
These were all fairly sensible questions; those at in-person events can get more whacky (“Would a polar bear or a tiger win in a fight?”).
Adapting your activity to the audience and location is a key part of any outreach activity and should be incorporated into the planning right from the start: succeeding to plan is planning to succeed!
