Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SHARPER (SHAring Researchers’ Passion for Enhanced Roadmaps - The European Researchers’ Night in Italy 2022-2023)
Período documentado: 2023-02-01 hasta 2024-01-31
The main SHARPER’s objective can be summarized as follows.
• to support students to better understand the researchers’ world and to encourage them to enter researcher careers and play a role in shaping the future;
• to provide teachers with effective tools to foster the dialogue between researchers and young generations;
• to motivate young students to enter researcher careers and play a role in shaping the future;
• to encourage children to discover researchers as role models because they are passionate and knowledgeable
• to convey the message that researchers are passionate persons who have a key role in tackling global challenges starting from the more urgent ones such as the climate change impact and the global sanitary emergencies
• to encourage strong collaborations between researchers and citizens aiming at knowledge-based innovation
• to create social inclusion within the research process overcoming different social divides;
• to use researchers’ emotions and enthusiasm to make research accessible and comprehensible to all;
• to develop a national community of researchers who are also excellent communicators and connected within Europe with other researcher communicators.The expected qualitative impact of the project is to reinforce the collaboration among all the actors involved to improve the citizens’ engagement with researchers.
The first period of the project was used to develop in parallel two programs: (a) the joint programs such as the new version of the online marathon and the common projects addressed to schools (b) the local programs of pre-events, events during the night and events for schools. The SHARPER network expanded also including some villages and towns connected with the main 14 centers for a total of 20 cities. This territorial expansion was indeed the first achievement of the project.
Moreover, a set of 105 venues were selected by the Sharper cities. As planned in the original project a combination of onsite, online only, and blended activities (onsite activities live-streamed online and online dialogues among researchers based in different labs and venues all over Italy and all over the world) were developed during the Night. All the 14 cities adopted this approach that allowed to produce and offer to a wide audience not only the opportunity to take part to a wide range of actions located in their cities or in other places around Italy and in other countries in connection with researchers acting around the globe. For the first time a common challenge was faced due to bad weather conditions that obliged many cities to move activities from outdoor venues to indoor places taking this decision during the week of the Night based on weather forecast. The Sharper 2022 programme include 1007 actions including pre-event, that were organized during the summer and the main events on the 30th of September 2022 and in the following days of the weekend. The activities for schools started in September and in the middle of the school year 2022/2023 the results were excellent: almost 10.000 students through national activities and local activities for schools.