Project description
Linking researchers with the public in France
Science will take centre stage during the European Researchers’ Night events that will take place in 12 French cities in 2018 and 13 in 2019. Organised by the EU-funded STORIES project, the events will spark the creativity of both researchers and the public based on specific themes. The theme will be ‘1 001 Stories’ in 2018 and ‘Join in the Investigations’ in 2019. More than 1 000 researchers will participate each year, interacting with the public. The overall aim is to increase public awareness and understanding of research and how it works and to build connections between the public and research. By helping researchers communicate their work to the general public, project activities will also shed light on the various issues researchers face.
Objective
"We are proposing ERNs in 12 French cities for 2018 and in 13 for 2019. For 12 years, our consortium has organized successful national events, improving year after year the quality of the events, and the strength of the national coordination.
Since the beginning, we have worked on the essence of scientific engagement: a successful, direct encounter between researchers and the public. The strategy is to spark the creativity of both researchers and the public via the proposition of a single general topic (""1001 Stories"" for 2018, ""Join in the Investigations"" for 2019), and a large palette of engaging formats for the ensuing dialogues. Certain of these formats are common to the 12 towns, such as ""Dialogues in the Dark"", ""Speed-searching"", ""Participatory Experiments"". Scenography and artistic interventions will ensure a specific atmosphere, in line with the chosen topics: the dream-like quality of tales in 2018, the exciting thrill of investigation in 2019. In each of the 12 cities, between 1000 and 5000 people will attend the Night. More than 1200 researchers will be mobilized every year, reaching a total audience of more than 73,000 persons. The time spent by each visitor at the Night event as measured in previous years, 2.5 h., is high and we aim to increase it.
An EU Corner café in each venue will ensure informal exchanges involving foreign researchers. Our proposal focuses on the training of researchers in the ""art of the encounter"" relying on a science communication training scheme developed by several partners in the framework of a French national project.
Lastly, we plan to renew the ""Great Participatory Experiment"" in 2019. In each city, the public will contribute to a national participatory scientific experiment chosen in 2018 after a challenge involving all our research institutions.
Formal partnerships have been established with the Ministries of Culture and of Research. This will ensure further national visibility.
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Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
CSA - Coordination and support actionCoordinator
25000 BESANCON
France