LEAF: heaL thE plAnet's Future

Project Information

LEAF

Grant agreement ID: 101036100

DOI

10.3030/101036100

Project closed

EC signature date 5 May 2021

Start date 1 April 2021

End date 30 November 2021

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions

Total cost

€ 249 500,00

EU contribution

€ 249 500,00

Coordinated by

ASSOCIAZIONE FRASCATI SCIENZA
Italy

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - LEAF (LEAF: heaL thE plAnet's Future)

Reporting period: 2021-04-01 to 2021-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

LEAF (heaL thE plAnet's Future) had the main objective to increase the awareness on the importance of research and innovation and improve trust in the researcher's work by effectively involving the society in experimenting science through 400 hands on events focused on a set of EU Green Deal selected topics.
The main goal was to make science accessible and fun to everyone, thus generating a practical understanding of how to cope with climate change issues. The LEAF project was developed in 19 cities in Italy, thus involving 40 partners with a series of events happening between 20 to 25 of September 2021 with a peak of events on Friday 24 and Saturday 25.
The final result has been a relevant increase in the awareness of why and how the researcher's work is relevant for the benefit of our current and future planet, as well as effectively encouraging young people in embarking in scientific careers by generating a real impact on science.
The main objectives of the LEAF were to:

- enlarge the public’s interest on the EU Green Deal topics addressed by the project in order to reduce climate change, mainly using a learning-by-doing approach.
- encourage the society to actively take part in science and discoveries, reducing the general sense of discouragement towards science. The public had the possibility to meet the scientists on the streets of the cities involved in the project, and to ask them questions on relevant topics for the society within the EU Green Deal framework.
- Better understanding of the key benefits that research brings to society in daily life: our public has experienced with their own hands the results achieved by researchers in many different fields and understood the impact of science in society, by playing with science, both inside and outside the research laboratories.
- Reduce the stereotypes about researchers and improve gender equality in STEM to stimulate a direct dialogue between researchers and students, thus underling in particular how science and scientist can solve the main societal challenges for the next decade (2021 - 2030) at global level.
- Increase the interest of people in pursuing scientific careers: by concretely showing how citizens and society can collaborate in science and research, thus constantly engaging them in researchers’ work throughout the year, both inside and outside the laboratories, through the activities organized in schools and in the main streets of the involved cities (this included the promotion of the MSCA research work).

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

We decided to maintain a percentage of online events since we wanted to exploit this modality not only as a backup solution in case of COVID limitations but since we wanted to use online to reach more people and bring NIGHT messages to locations not reached by onsite events.
Thanks to online events we succeeded in having people connected from different parts of Italy permitting those people to know about research, researchers, and EU support for research and NIGHT.

Activities performed:

- Hands-on experiments around science, biology, physics, life science, environment, green deal, mobility

- Science Shows targeting chemistry, astronomy, space exploration, physics, medicine, vaccines, sea life, biodiversity

- Competitions, that were slams on the topic of the participating researchers (biology, physics, chemistry and engineering)

- Quizzes like Dr Night on curiosity about research, researchers, EU support for research, Agenda 2030 and all topics of New Green Deal.


We estimated the number of people made aware of the European Researchers' Night t be 40000

In terms of estimated attendees we got 15300 people and we also reached the following targets:

- Number of researchers involved having benefited from EU support (FP7, H2020) other than MSCA: 66

- Number of researchers involved having benefited from MSC schemes:27

- Total number of researchers involved in the activities organized: 1500

The researchers@schools WP anticipated in MSCA&CITIZENS call was exactly in the direction we enhanced this year. LEAF pushed a lot of activities with schools during the entire year since we wanted to have a continuous contact with students.
During the LEAF project we have explored the possibility to move science from lab to schools by organizing events at schools in order to give the chance to students, too far from the locations of LEAF events, to participate in scientific experiments and meet researchers dealing with their common lab routine and work.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Pandemic implied some limitations especially concerning the events organization, number of people, safety and security plan. We succeeded in solving this problem by asking an external expert to prepare a dedicated safety and security plan and we had the possibility to organize onsite events while respecting all limitations and being aware about eventual novelties. In parallel to in-presence events, there have been organized events specifically prepared to be delivered online.
Thanks to the collaboration with our partners, we proposed different online formats that had very good results in terms of feedback and numbers of people.
Online events were also used during our Science Week in which, normally, we ask schools to reach our venues where laboratories with specific stagings were prepared.
This year student mobility from schools to external venues was difficult due to, e.g. the necessity of having EU Green Pass to participate in events although it was not necessary for students to go to schools.
This implied that if some students did not have a green pass, the entire class cannot reach the venues and online events permitted to overcome this bottleneck.
Here it is a list of online events, as example:

- Schools --> https://www.frascatiscienza.it/pagine/notte-europea-dei-ricercatori-2021/programma-scuole-2/?bytarget=&bycategory=&bytown=ONLINE&byday=&byorgs=

- General public --> https://www.frascatiscienza.it/pagine/notte-europea-dei-ricercatori-2021/programma/?bytarget=&bycategory=&bytown=ONLINE&byday=&byorgs=

We enriched our offer that, as usual, was divided for school and general public (these are the links for onsite events):

- Schools --> https://www.frascatiscienza.it/pagine/notte-europea-dei-ricercatori-2021/programma-scuole-2/

- General public -->https://www.frascatiscienza.it/pagine/notte-europea-dei-ricercatori-2021/programma/

Apart from the duration of the COVID limitations, we aim to maintain a dedicated part of the program to online events, both for schools and the general public, in order to reach more people, villages not well connected or far from NIGHT locations but also to exploit online potentialities to prepare dedicated formats.
We will enhance the school's program by increasing the number of MSCA researchers involved in school activities and we will enhance during future editions the parts relative to Quizzes and Slams, given the excellent feedback for the format and for
the contents obtained with the proposed Quizzes to general public.
Concerning the slams, called Research Factor, we had a very pleasant event in which researchers also used artistic solutions to explain their research (rap music, dance, etc.) and this POP solution was appreciated by
researchers and the public itself, contributing for sure to reduce stereotypes on researchers.

LEAF logo