A call for suggested activities was circulated to Trinity’s research community in August 2020. The call asked participants to consider, among other things, the following in proposing activities:
• how we can bring research into people’s homes, experiments that can be demonstrated online, or interactive activities that people can join in with
• Proposals for activities and events aimed at primary and secondary school students. What would get them talking about research? What kind of conversations do we want to spark? Do we have a call to action for something children can start to do today to make a big difference to their world?
• All areas of research are welcome! The aim is to have representation from across all three faculties. Proposals for activities that span disciplines are encouraged.
A second call was circulated for researchers who were not in a position to propose events or activities. This call sought interested researchers to participate in the Meet the Researcher postcard and video series which was used as part of the social media awareness campaign. A dedicated website for START 2020 was created within the main Trinity Research website. This site served as the meeting point for visitors to START and featured an EU Corner, the full programme of events, and a dedicated page with further information and registration links for each event and activity. In order to better track attendance, most live events required registration in advance via Eventbrite. A series of activities that could be engaged with at any time were also included in the programme. Overall, 60 live sessions were run across 27 distinct events and activities for START 2020. A programme of activities was also designed for people to engage with and participate at any time should they be unable to attend any of the live sessions.
As part of the START programme, a series of training workshops were offered to researchers. There were two separate strands: the Scientifically Speaking communication training workshops in collaboration with the British Council; and two research impact workshops in line with the events in the Tent of Bad Science. A series of four half day communication training workshops were offered to a wide range of researchers across Ireland and Northern Ireland, with a specific focus on MSCA researchers. Only three had been planned initially but a fourth, in partnership with Cork Discovers European Researchers’ Night, was developed due to high demand. All workshops had been planned to take place face-to-face but a shift to virtual delivery was required due to the Covid-19 restrictions. The workshops were led by British Council Ireland in partnership with Trinity College Dublin, Dundalk Institute of Technology, Ulster University and Waterford Institute of Technology with researchers from across the island being able to take part.
