ADIFF’s execution was informed by the restrictions posed by the Covid-19 pandemic situation worldwide, and a festival delivered entirely online resulted. This affected the reach of the festival both in terms of overall attendance at events but also in geographical reach.
The resulting programme of events for the general public included live participation quizzes, talks, round-table discussions, researcher ‘demo-dating’, twitter quizzes, online trail, social media campaigns celebrating national/international awareness days, researcher content developed as accessible social media content, video Q&A sessions for schools, poster campaigns, on-street advertising.
Subject areas presented by, with and on behalf of researchers highlighted the vast range of interesting and surprising topics studied and progressed by researchers in Wales, with a special focus on revealing the multilingual skills that prove valuable to progressing research and creating positive collaborative environments.
Around 100 researchers participated in ADIFF 2020. A training network with a sociable club environment was established through Microsoft Teams, with 14 training sessions offered to support researchers in developing and sharing the skills and ideas required to engage a range of public audiences with their research. The sessions we well attended, providing short, focussed support to help researchers contribute to planned events and campaigns, or to help them develop and deliver their own.
Project officers from Cardiff University, Science Made Simple and contributors from other organisations supported this training network and the events to help researchers access audiences, adapt their work to suit those audiences and also to provide a safe online operating environment for both researchers and the public.
The switch to online resulted in lower than anticipated numbers reached through live events, as original plans were to create a pop-up city centre festival, with high volume of passing audience traffic. However, a greater effort was placed on creation of engagement through social media, and the online format presented opportunities to connect to audiences beyond the Cardiff Capitol region and to collaborate with partners in other regions and countries.
ADIFF recorded an overall reach through live and recorded events, partner meetings, promotion to influencing organisations, broadcast and social media of 430,908.
Audience engaged included students and teachers in schools, researchers (as particpants of ERN and beyond), families, professionals, adults, Girlguiding Cymru and broader public. The project recorded audience participation from Wales, England, Scotland, Colombia, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany.
