SHARPER 2022/2023 project is the European researchers’ night in 14 Italian cities (Ancona, Cagliari, Camerino, Catania, Genova, L'Aquila, Macerata, Nuoro, Palermo, Pavia, Perugia, Sassari, Terni and Trieste), and it is taking place as part of the global cultural effort to enhance the dialogue between citizens and researchers. Through a diverse set of engagement strategies and communication formats, citizens of all ages have been meeting researchers from different fields, discovering the strong connection between their daily job and society at large. Within this context a new effort was developed to enhance the involvement of students and teachers with a specific set of programs developed all year round in schools of all Italy, namely the program “Researchers at school”.
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.