This is part of our series on using online environments and platforms in engaging public audiences with research. You can read more about how BU has adapted to online engagement over the past year in a previous post.

Below, Dr Oliver Gingrich describes running an online engagement event, the logistics and support received from BU’s Public Engagement with Research (PER) team – and most importantly, the impact of sharing research.

Oliver also spoke at a recent meeting of the BU Public Engagement with Research Network and has shared slides from the presentation.

My experience running an online event – KIMA: Noise

For me, as for many others, the new realities in the early days of the Covid-19 health crisis resulted in all new challenges in continuing research practice and dissemination. To help tackle these challenges I thought I’d share our experience developing and running an online event earlier this year, in case you find it useful.

KIMA: Noise by Analema Group. Tate Modern 2019. www.analemagroup.com Image by Sophie le Roux. www.sophielerouxdocu.com

I am a researcher and creative practitioner, and artist with the collective Analema Group, recipients of an Arts Council England project grant for the art and research project KIMA Noise; an investigation into the effect of urban noise on health and wellbeing that we conducted for over three years with one of the leading experts in the field Prof. Stephen Stansfeld (Queen Mary University of London). Over the years Prof. Stansfeld has worked on the effect of noise specifically on learning and spearheaded the European Network on Noise and Health (ENNAH) and is currently working on a RANCH study on the effect of air traffic noise across 4 different countries. The Analema Group is a collective of four people founded by my colleague, the artist Evgenia Emets, Dr. Alain Renaud (Research Fellow at Bournemouth University) and the visual developer David Negrao.

KIMA: Noise by Analema Group. Tate Modern 2019. www.analemagroup.com Image by Sophie le Roux. www.sophielerouxdocu.com

With the Analema Group, we were looking at effective strategies to communicate the known impact of noise on health to wider audiences, including local communities. Having been appointed Tate Exchange Associate, we brought this project to Tate Modern, with support of the Arts Council, resulting in several installations, talks, workshops, the publication of a monograph and ultimately a film. The success of the exhibition, talks and workshops not only transcended through the audience numbers, visitors and participants, but moreover the type of discussions we were able to have with local communities, policymakers, and other artists and activists. The art film KIMA: Noise captured this effort, but with the unprecedented challenges of Covid-19 we needed to find new ways to present this work to the public.

Thanks to Adam Morris and Brian McNulty from Bournemouth University’s world-class Knowledge Exchange & Impact Team (KEIT), we were able to communicate these research outputs to a wider public including BU’s academics: Initially being unfamiliar with the logistics of organising an online screening, I was more than grateful for the handholding and support by Adam in promoting and positioning the screening of the art film, but also for his and his team’s support in orchestrating the event. In the case of our event, online literally meant connected, as speakers from 3 countries (The UK, Portugal and Switzerland) came together.

At the screening of ‘KIMA: Noise – The Film’, we were honoured to welcome Prof. Stansfeld as one of our panelists, as well as Camilla Yavas (Film maker), Paola D’Albore (community engagement), Evgenia Emets (artist) and myself as researcher. The success of the event was highlighted through the wide networks we were able to activate including researchers at Bournemouth, interested artists, activists, and the wider BCP publics. The initial world premiere of the film via Bournemouth University was followed by a vibrant Q&A and discussion on the effect of noise on health and wellbeing that worked as well online as it would have in the space of the Tate. Thanks to the success of this world premiere, the film has since been seen by hundreds of people, with further screenings being planned nationally and internationally. The big benefit of an online event is that audiences and speakers can come together from all corners of the world, and the barrier to entry is so low, which makes it much easier to reach a critical mass. I want to express my sincere feelings of gratitude to BU’s outstanding Public Engagement team, who held our hand every step of the way, and assured the success of KIMA: Noise.

More information on the project can be found here:

https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/tate-exchange/workshop/kima-noise

https://analemagroup.com/projects/kima-noise-at-tate-exchange/

Watch the Film here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIXo5xt0_pw&t=32s

This is part of our series on using online environments and platforms in engaging public audiences with research. You can read more about how BU has adapted to online engagement over the past year in a previous post.

Café Scientifique is an international event format that hosts a talk from a researcher followed by plenty of time for questions and discussion, all in an informal and friendly environment.

For several years, Café Scientifique has been held in Boscombe’s Café Boscanova, a cosy café capable of holding 20 to 40 people at a push. Holding events in this space, privately opened for the evening and offering food and drink, encourages a laid-back and conversational atmosphere.

This posed a challenge when restrictions meant that gatherings and cafes were both off-limits. Since September 2020 we have held these events online, which has demonstrated the positives and negatives of online public engagement.

We’ve kept familiarity where possible, sticking to the same schedule of events held on the evening of the first Tuesday of every month (bar August and December). The events are hosted and promoted under the banner of BU, following the same format and with our regular host Dr Sharon Docherty.

We hold these events over Zoom allowing Sharon, our guest speaker and the audience to all see each other on video, and for the speaker to be able to present slides. Using the standard meeting platform does mean enforced muting of the audience though, to minimise additional noise.

With the ability to join from anywhere, and without the audience limit of a physical space, we’ve seen much higher attendance for our online events. Despite marketing these events only within the UK, we’ve welcomed attendees from around the world to hear about BU research and pose questions to our academics.

Our speaker for December 2020, Dr Sarah Elliott, shares some thoughts on the experience;

“I recently participated in Café Scientifique which, because of the current pandemic, has moved on-line. I think this is a great opportunity to be involved in and for viewers across the country to engage in scientific research.

Academics spend a lot of time presenting their research to each other and publishing their data, but through Café Sci as a platform you are able to reach a wider audience and facilitate discussions about your research in an informal and friendly environment.

The event had a good turn out and very positive feedback, the questions asked in the discussion were all thought provoking and important points were highlighted upon which I could expand my explanations. Academics always have so much to say, and not enough time to say it, so the ample time given for discussion at a Café Sci event provides a real opportunity to focus on the aspects of the talk which the public were most interested in.”

 

You can read more about Sarah’s experience in this blog post.

Hosting these events online has also made them easy to record, where guest academics chose to do so, and so we are able to share past events through our YouTube channel.

Catch up on other Café Scientifique events.

Translating Café Scientifique online didn’t all go as expected, though. To begin with, we tried as much as possible to encourage the same convivial, conversational atmosphere as in-person events, inviting audience members to chat amongst themselves in the chat section and ask their questions live over video. However, we soon found that attendees were generally reluctant to talk on video in front of a large virtual audience and asked instead that questions be posted in the chat, where host Sharon could read them to our speaker.

This encapsulates the importance of challenging your assumptions about engaging online and being willing to adapt. While there are certainly advantages to be had in audience size, diversity and types of accessibility, it can be difficult to foster a sense of interpersonal connection. Whether this is a relevant factor will vary between projects.

Despite the advantages we’ve seen with holding Café Scientifique online, we plan to resume in-person events when possible, as the café atmosphere and surroundings are the essence of what makes the format special. However, the experience of holding these events online has been, and will continue to be valuable in advising on activities that thrive in an online environment.

There’s no doubt that the past year has presented a huge challenge to public engagement with research, but it’s one to which the BU research community has risen brilliantly.

With an increased national awareness of the role HEIs play in research, and vice versa, comes a stronger imperative to engage public audiences in the exciting research carried out at BU. In a series of posts this week we’ll be taking a refreshed look at public engagement with research in the context of the past year, some inspirational examples of projects by BU academics and advice on how to develop public engagement work.

Engaging online

The start of restrictions on events last year saw a mass pivot to online engagement with research, adapting familiar formats for online delivery and developing new techniques too.

We’ll take a closer look at some of these examples in future posts, but here’s just a flavour of the activities carried out over the past year to engage the public in research;

• Café Scientifique has been held online since September last year, drawing in record numbers from around the globe. Find out more about how we’ve delivered these events online and an academic’s experience of being involved.
• Dr Oliver Gingrich; researcher, creative practitioner, and artist with the collective Analema Group, held an online research film premiere and Q&A on urban noise and wellbeing. Oliver’s experiences and advice are covered in more detail in another post.
• The ESRC Festival of Social Science 2020 was held almost entirely online across the national festival. BU held five live online events, as well as an online exhibition, covering topics as diverse as online gambling, communicating public health data, visual perception, social care decisions, Dorset heritage and nature, and female political leadership. Take a closer look at these events in another post.
• Dr Catalin Brylla screened his film on blindness, wellbeing and stigma in the virtual world of Second Life, where his public group have their own ‘island’.
• The Ageing and Dementia Research Centre hosted informal coffee mornings to chat about their research and empower relevant audiences to feed back on ongoing and future research.
• Dr Sarah Collard shared interviews, personal experience and hosted discussion on the topic of exercising with epilepsy.
• The Department of Life and Environmental Sciences (LES) translated their fledgling Family Science Festival to an online format, and were invited by leading environmental science funder NERC to share their experience.
• The SURE 2021 conference highlighted excellent research from over 100 undergraduates in a full day conference for audiences inside and outside of BU.

The future of online engagement

It has been really impressive to see how academics have adapted and reformulated their plans for public engagement with research. We’ve seen people use this situation as an opportunity to refresh their thinking and explore the opportunities presented by online engagement, rather than be limited by it. There are a number of advantages that mean it should remain an option to consider;

• Online engagement with research is more accessible for many people and can reach entirely new audiences as a result
• It is often cheaper, avoiding venue, travel and catering costs
• Being open to attendees at a national or international level means your audience can be very specific, but much larger than a local event. In the right context, this can be an effective pathway to achieving research impact.

However, we can’t just move everything online and call it a success. There are potential downsides to engaging online that can vary depending on your context;

• Increased accessibility for some means decreased accessibility for others; limited IT skills, confidence and equipment exclude many from joining
• It is more difficult to foster a sense of interpersonal connection when engaging online, compared to in-person experiences

Looking ahead, we need to find a balanced approach, in which online engagement is just one highly effective option among many others that might work for engaging the public with research. Later this week we’ll look at what support is available at BU for developing strategies and activities to engage the public in research.