What makes good public engagement – lessons from Cheltenham Science Festival 2011

As a round-up of the festival, here are some tips I picked up that you might find useful if you want to communicate science to the public too…

1. Be aware that different words mean different things to different scientists, and proably different meanings again to the public. For example, in my (energy) department the word ‘model’ implies running simulations on a computer, whereas for a geneticist a ‘model’ is an animal experimented on in order to learn something about humans. When you say ‘model’ to an average person off the street, they might think of Kate Moss or some lego.

2. Anticipate that people in the audience will want to give very personal testimonies, to which they expect a public reply. The talks on autism, gender and hunger were three such examples in which the speakers reacted very sensitively to such testimonies, and encouraged more private conversation afterwards. I thought they handled the issues well.

3. I think that one well-developed idea is better than a whistle-stop tour of, say, physics. Jim Al-Khalili is a fantastically interesting speaker, but was slightly overambitious in one talk as he attempted to talk about the whole universe in an hour.  This involved just ‘dropping in’ mind-boggling statements such as, “Time is warped by gravity too, by the way”, then moving on, leaving some audience members somewhat befuddled.  The trouble is, physicists WANT to talk about the bigger picture, as they see beauty in unification, but need to learn that this can come across to the general public as a mush of seemingly unrelated ideas.

4. Public engagement takes TIME! I was impressed that Bath University’s doctoral training centre in Sustainable Chemistry had their own little tent in which they were helping children make soap, but this is as a result of an obligatory module on public engagement during the masters year of the programme. If you really want to bring science to the public, be prepared to commit.

5. Be honest about the negative aspects of science and technology (see my previous blog post https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/events/2011/06/08/how-to-do-public-engagement-on-energy-and-privacy/)

6. The ‘Talking Point’ tent was a great idea. Giving members of the public the chance to meet the speakers and ask their own questions allows even shyer people/those who think their questions are ‘dumb’ to raise them.

7. Putting on events for children is vital. I know that I got interested in science by an academic bothering to put on a talk for nine-year-olds in an inflatable stardome. So thanks to people like Andrea Sella for giving up their Sunday morning.

So in conclusion, I loved every minute of the festival, met some great people and came back with lots of ideas for scientific communication. Hope you’ve enjoyed reading about it too!

Image: Professor Martyn Poliakoff, University of Nottingham