Sparks officially started on 6 July 2015 with a Kick-off meeting in Brussels. Since then, a cascade of coordinated work has been performed by 33 partners in order to reach its ambitious goals.
In October 2015 AIGHD, organised the first workshop bringing all Sparks partners together to set the scene and create a common understanding of RRI. Following this workshop, an Inception Report was produced, which informed all of the future work for the local organisers in their mission to realise and spread the concept of RRI.
In parallel, the design and construction of the Sparks exhibition “Beyond the Lab: The DIY Science Revolution” was being finalised. It explores the increasing number of inventions and scientific discoveries being made by hackers, patient groups and ordinary citizens. Each local host of the exhibition showcased an example of an RRI-inspired research project. Beyond the Lab started its tour in summer 2016. After being on show for 1,000 days and reaching more than 1 million visitors in 29 countries, it made its final stops in Ireland, Finland Poland, and Romania. Three clones of the exhibition were offered as long-term donations to science centres in Spain, the Netherlands and Poland, where visitors will be able to enjoy them until 2022.
Together with the exhibition, project partners ran participatory activities aimed at triggering interaction between citizens and researchers and ultimately at involving the public in RRI. In total, more than 240 events, attracting almost 9,000 participants, took place. Five innovative participatory event formats have been tested and developed to complement the exhibition content and to engage the public in science topics related to health and medicine, DIY science and RRI processes. All local organisers had to organise a Reverse Science Café and six Science Espressos. Moreover, they had to run one optional activity that could either be a Pop-up Science Shop; a Hackathon/Incubation Workshop; or a Scenario Workshop. 233 local partnerships were established to facilitate the delivery of these events.
Extensive data was collected in all 29 countries. This resulted in a Playful Toolkit of Activities which summarises the formats and explains how to run them. Moreover, two significant events were organised as part of the Policy Outreach mission of Sparks. The first event took place in June 2017 at the European Parliament in cooperation with the STOA committee on the topic of health systems for the future. The second event was a Reverse Science Café taking place in January 2018 in Brussels. This event attracted many researchers, civil society organisations and NGOs, and explored the topic of Post-Truth vs Science Engagement. Both events, as well as conclusions from the evaluation of the project activities, resulted in the Policy Recommendations document “Shaking-up Science and Society Relations”.
Communication activities of Sparks started with the design of a communication strategy and the visual identity of the project. Sparks has produced 9 videos, a website, active social media accounts, promotional postcards, printed brochures and 6 newsletters. The project has a strong presence on social media, engaging over 1500 followers. The project has been presented in at least 25 international events and professional forums such as IAS conference 2016 (Durban), three Ecsite conferences, Living Knowledge Conferences, Ars Electronica Festivals and MuseumNext 2017. The project generated extensive coverage, resulting in over 150 newspaper, radio and blog articles on the project, including favourable reports in major European press titles such as The Guardian, Gazeta Wyborca, and The Irish Times.
