The May Festival is the University of Aberdeen’s annual festival. It started in 2013 and, since then, it has grown in size and popularity. Thousands of people participate to a variety of activities spanning science, music, sport, Gaelic, environment etc. The programme was full of great events (have a look here, ranging from performances by the University of Aberdeen Chamber Choir to a talk on the science of swearing. I was particularly impressed by the The King’s Dig, where members of the public were invited to join an archaeological excavation site on campus, a grammar school that all prospective students had to enter before attending King’s. The staff at The King’s Dig also organised some special sessions for people to have a go at the actual excavation.
Join us live at the King's Dig on our Facebook channel at 3.30pm! https://t.co/MEmA8qGwMr #MayFestival #KingsDig2017 #5MinutesToGo pic.twitter.com/WIFugawwiG
— Aberdeen University (@aberdeenuni) May 22, 2017
I participated as part of the stall “Colour in nature” with Lesley Lancaster, Aoife Leonard and Richard Hassall . The idea was to explain what colour is and what role it plays in natural processes with interactive displays. Children had fun making rainbows with an electric torch and a prism, while learning that white light is actually made up of all the colours of the rainbow. We collected rhododendron leaves from the gardens and showed our guests that by shining lights of different colours through the leaves, only the green light was visible on the other side. That gave them a little insight into photosynthesis and what colour really is: plants are green because they absorb all the colours of the white light except for the green, which is reflected. From there we explained that white looks white because it reflects all the colours, while black is black because it absorbs all of them, and invited the incredulous children to wear a white and a black glove and put their hands under a light. Then we asked them which hand was getting hotter. Despite the fact that many children told us that it was their white hand that was getting hotter, the experiment was eventually successful when we realised that the gloves were way too big for a child’s hand and that asking them to make a fist fixed the problem. It was a lot of fun! Children are very interested in science when they can play with it. And they have the best questions, sometimes very difficult to answer. My personal highlight of the event was when the dad of a very enthusiastic girl came back to the stall to thank us for sparking his daughter’s interest.
Come look at Colour in nature! at MayFest @Lancaster_LT @RichHassall @Frances_Mancini #MayFestival #colourinnature #howdobeessee pic.twitter.com/1MuNuIZ1qe
— Aoife Leonard (@AoifeLeonard1) May 28, 2017
I am very proud of my institution for dedicating so much effort to this amazing public engagement initiative. These events are extremely important for academia and science for different reasons. The first reason is that we have a moral obligation to communicate our research to the people that are actually paying for it. Science outreach is the first step towards regaining the public’s trust, it encourages people to think about the importance of science in their everyday life and it can inspire the next generation of scientists. The last reason is a selfish one: it doesn’t matter how many lives our research could potentially change, if we don’t communicate it effectively and outside academia it will change nothing. So, if you want your work to have a real impact, you should consider taking your science out of the lab and into public engagement events. See you at May Festival 2018!