Periodic Reporting for period 1 - FREETOACT (FRom ExpEctation TO ACTion)
Reporting period: 2022-05-01 to 2023-04-30
This projects organizes the European Researcher's Night (ERN) in 16 cities in France. The general goal is to strenghen the links between science and society.
Research and Innovation are essential tools to face climate change, rising pollution, social divide and other challenges that we have to deal with today, and are expected to aggravate in the future decades. While researchers are already extremely active on these matters the public does not quite understand their work. But this does not impede it from being trustful toward them. Media debates during the pandemic showed that people can be surprised by the uncertainty inherent to research. This could contradict their vision of a stabilized science. In the project FREETOACT we create the room for public and researchers to meet, and to focus on “science in the making”, to shift from a “public communication of Science” paradigm to a “public understanding of Research” paradigm. For that, it is essential to create the adequate conditions and close encounters that are more conducive to deconstructing fixed opinions.
The expected direct impact is to make more than 1000 reseachers and more then 30.000 persons from the general public to meet and discuss about research. But more importantly, we aim at having an long-term influence on science communication in France, by showing an exemple of a successful event, and communicating about it.
Research and Innovation are essential tools to face climate change, rising pollution, social divide and other challenges that we have to deal with today, and are expected to aggravate in the future decades. While researchers are already extremely active on these matters the public does not quite understand their work. But this does not impede it from being trustful toward them. Media debates during the pandemic showed that people can be surprised by the uncertainty inherent to research. This could contradict their vision of a stabilized science. In the project FREETOACT we create the room for public and researchers to meet, and to focus on “science in the making”, to shift from a “public communication of Science” paradigm to a “public understanding of Research” paradigm. For that, it is essential to create the adequate conditions and close encounters that are more conducive to deconstructing fixed opinions.
The expected direct impact is to make more than 1000 reseachers and more then 30.000 persons from the general public to meet and discuss about research. But more importantly, we aim at having an long-term influence on science communication in France, by showing an exemple of a successful event, and communicating about it.
The ERN was organized in 16 cities in France and online, making approximately 5 million persons aware of the event, via posters, leaflets, press articles, videos, and social media campaign. Among this audience, more than 2 million listened to a researcher speaking, on the radio or via videos on social medias. But they did not have the opportunity to interact.
The most important part of the work on the project is to create this interaction. 1350 researchers were trained to science communication and directly met 35.500 persons of the public, more than half of them being young independant adults, the hardest public to reach for this type of cultural events. A total of 173 on-site activities have been organized to allow direct discussions to happen.
We succeeded to make the dialogue happen : 100% of the public listend to at least one researcher, and 90% of the public spoke to at least one researcher. On average, 70% of the time, when someone listened to a researcher, they talked back to him, asking question, making suggestions, adding a personnal experience...
The most important part of the work on the project is to create this interaction. 1350 researchers were trained to science communication and directly met 35.500 persons of the public, more than half of them being young independant adults, the hardest public to reach for this type of cultural events. A total of 173 on-site activities have been organized to allow direct discussions to happen.
We succeeded to make the dialogue happen : 100% of the public listend to at least one researcher, and 90% of the public spoke to at least one researcher. On average, 70% of the time, when someone listened to a researcher, they talked back to him, asking question, making suggestions, adding a personnal experience...