As in previous years, competitions and pre-events played important part of the overall visibility of the project and the ERN activities in general. SU led the organisation of the National competition for multimedia products, essays, drawings, paintings, posters, collages, and models “Scientific discoveries that inspire me”, thus stimulating the participants to explore and discover science and engineering on their own. Other partners held separate competitions in the creative sphere and the digital format of this year’s activities provided an unexpected advantage, allowing some of them to also spread beyond their geographic regions. A total of 27 pre-events were held across Bulgaria for ERN 2020.
The awareness campaign started months before the event and resulted in a total of 129 publications across different media platforms, which is more than 50% raise from the previous year.”. As a result over 4 000 000 people were reached by the vast number of communication activities, thus fulfilling the pre-set goals.
The COVID-19 related restrictions led to organising the ERN 2020 as an online, virtual event. The digital nature of events allowed for them to be popularised and received participation on a national and sometimes – international level. In addition, the team produced:
• 56 videos uploaded to YouTube
• 12 issues of the “BG Nauka” magazine with special emphasis on ERN 2020, which were downloaded over 85 000 times,
• A special edition “100 Faces in the Bulgarian Science”;
• Exhibition “Faces in Science” designed for researchers at the Faculty of Physics of Sofia University;
• A number of podcast episodes related to or advertising ERN 2020 with over 50 000 people listening;
• 42 videos published on Facebook that reached over 250 000 people
• books – “The 21st Century Teachers“ and “A palette of Pirin and Renaissance Costumes”
• poster exhibitions, etc.
The digital resources that were created for the Night will continue to be available online, both on the website of the project and in the social media, thus ensuring better sustainability and more long-term impact of the activities of the project.
The experience from this ERN provided a valuable insight on the potential digital enhancement of future physical activities and while future ERNs are expected to have much more traditional formats, this will allow the engagement of auditoria in rural communities, distance regions or with disadvantages, not allowing them to take part in some physical format.
The digital form the activities allowed the consortium to reach out to citizens, that would be normally unable to participate in a physical ERN. Notable is the presence of foreign students in some of the activities, as well as the broad national coverage of contests, that were designed to be regional.
