BU Research Blog

With the call for proposals being open for Festival of Learning 2017, today we have for you another post to give you some inspiration for the type of the event that could be your own! Planning your event can be difficult and time consuming, especially if you have never done anything quite like that before and because of that we are here to help!

Make sure to come to one of our drop-in ‘Support for developing your idea sessions’  and talk to us.

Next session is on Friday 11 November, 12:30pm-1:30pm at EB204, Executive Business Centre. Additionally we also offer bookable training session for you to learn all about ‘Developing a public engagement event’.

What you research often determines how you will engage with the public and who your work will impact, but there are ways to broaden your impact. This can be done by bringing different academics into one room.  Anything can happen when two separate disciplines are being combined together and quite often this can be a simple recipe for an effective public engagement event too!

Making Science Graphic

British Science Festival in Swansea featured many creative and fun events and one of them was an interactive drawing workshop Making Science Graphic. The event used graphic novels, which can capture the imagination with imaginative narrative and vivid drawings, as a useful vehicle for talking about science. Neuroscience is not the easiest discipline to be sharing with the public without having to use too many scientific terms but two neuroscientists Uta Frith and Chris Frith managed to do just that in a fun way. They first explained what the mirror neurons are and took their audience on fascinating journey through human brain to then let graphic novel enthusiast Adam Rutherford and artist Daniel Locke translate it into graphic novel. Spoiled for choice by a wide variety of drawing mediums, the audience was encouraged to put their skills into practice and design their own little graphic novel about mirror neurons.  Both artists observed the process, talked to the attendees and offered some guidance.  Probably the only reason why I still remember what mirror neurons are is because I got to draw them and this was actually a very first novel graphic I ever designed.

This event took place as part of the British Science Festival in Swansea, 2016.