The first Cork Discovers event took place on September 28th 2018. It took place across 11 venues throughout Cork and was attended by over 2,000 people. Events were held on UCC’s historic campus as well as in Museums, Heritage Centres and pubs across the city. Over 100 researchers participated presenting research from diverse fields ranging from Archaeology to Zoology.
Cork Discovers celebrated its second European Researchers Night on September 27th 2019. It took place across 6 venues throughout Cork City and was attended by over 2,500 people. 134 researchers contributed communicating their research to a large and diverse public audience. Celebrations started early in the day with a series of workshops that were run for local school groups. A busy programme of workshops, talks and demos took place on campus in UCC, including a roundtable discussion on the challenges and rewards of sharing research in a civic space in the Glucksman Gallery; workshops that extracted DNA from a banana; hands-on experiments in Spanish and a series of talks in the Boole Library. Events also took place throughout the city, with Cork Public Museum, Nano Nagle Place (NNP), Blackrock Castle Observatory, Cork City Council and An Spailpín Fánach pub all hosting events.
A wide range of awareness raising activities were undertaken to ensure audience turnout and to raise awareness more broadly about European Researchers Night and research in general. Different social media channels were used to reach a wide range of audiences. Original content was created including a series of videos which are now available through the YouTube channel including official promotional videos and videos made by researchers involved in the events. The social media activities were run alongside other advertising activities including, press releases, radio adverts, adds in local publications and event guides, adverts on city busses, interviews on local radio and dissemination of posters and brochures via local schools and businesses. A number of research ambassadors also visited local schools to advertise the events.
On the night of the 2018 and 2019 events, members of the public were approached to take part in an impact assessment study. Those who registered completed a short questionnaire on the night and were contacted shortly after the event to complete a longer 'follow-up' questionnaire. These surveys were analysed by Qualia Analytics to evaluate their experience of the event and to measure the impact of this public engagement event on their thoughts about and understanding of science. Two reports was completed following the completion of this assessment.
