Members of the Public Engagement Committee (Kasia Piróg and Calum Kirk) attended the Science Communication Conference, hosted by the Manchester Metropolitan University and organised together withthe British Science Association, the Wellcome trust and the Royal Society of Chemistry.
The programme of the day: Science_Communication_Conference_Full_Programme_A4
For a brief summary of the sessions, relevant links and useful toolkits, please explore the links below:
Press release from the BSA website:
This year’s Science Communication Conference featured a broad and varied programme, and brought together a diverse group of delegates – with 350 journalists, practitioners, academics, press officers and researchers in attendance. Thursday kicked off with a truly inspirational keynote from Jess Thom, founder of Touretteshero, which set the tone for this year’s event. Jess talked about universal themes – including authentic communication; reaching new audiences; taking a creative, brave and inclusive approach; and being prepared to fail – while telling a personal narrative about her condition and her experiences. The keynote focused and energised everyone, getting us fired up to start looking ahead to how we might solve some of the issues facing the sector. Other sessions on Thursday, such as ‘barriers to engaging’, ‘does dialogue really do anything?’, and ‘guide to creating toolkits’, covered the breadth of science communication, and sparked useful discussions. […] Friday started with a lively panel debate about how and whether scientists should be opinion-formers outside their fields, followed by diverse workshops on the history of science, the making culture, and producing podcasts. The ‘funders anonymous’ session allowed delegates to gain an insight into the minds of funders including the Wellcome Trust, Royal Society of Chemistry and Crowdfunder. Meanwhile, the bad bugs book club generated stimulating discussion about Nemesis by Phillip Roth. The final afternoon was dedicated to our new ‘challenge sessions’. This was the first time we’d run these more energetic, ‘workshop style’ sessions at the Conference – they addressed a series of key issues, including: hype in science media, diversity, citizen science and the new Government. We have received good feedback so far, and would like to thank the speakers and delegates for their contributions towards the discussions; giving us lots of positives to improve on for 2016. […] We are hoping to storify some of the key sessions, but meanwhile, do take a look at #SciComm15 on twitter.