The value of conferences

I thought I might be all blogged out after my marathon blogging sessions during the NCCPE conference, yet I find myself sat on a train home thinking about the value of conferences.

I have mentioned it a couple of times already but following the advice of Dr Eureka Henkel, wear what is comfortable. No one judges you by what you wear at a conference (as long as you aren’t incredibly scruffy).

So I am feeling inspired by the NCCPE conference, in many ways, but one of the key things that struck me is that I didn’t feel like I wanted a nap after lunch! (Apologies to other conferences I have attended by saying this, please follow my point.). Each session was not a lecture from someone just explaining their research at me. Now this is a side effect of it being a public engagement conference but really we should all be learning from this anyway. The only time I just sat and listened was in the plenary sessions and even then there was some form of audience interaction. The rest of the conference comprised of workshops, storytelling and seminars. The poster session was accompanied by a series of “entertaining” demonstrations of research engagement projects including a science ceilidh and crawling through the dark to explore you ideas. Now these sessions were accompanied by some Buck’s Fizz and nibbles which may have helped people relax into having a good time. The fact that everyone there was involved in public engagement in some way and that kind of person has a “get up and give it a try” attitude also helps.

I have come away with a wealth of ideas and useful information. Now I need to pass some of that on.

Earlier in the year I decided to take on a “why not” attitude. This has lead to me putting forward my ideas and research to a couple of conferences, including this one. I aimed high, having just been to the conference I had been placed correctly, and I presented a poster. But if I hadn’t aimed high I might not have been selected for anything at all. At a previous conference where I presented a poster I wasn’t sure of the value of what I was doing. People read the poster, they commented and we discussed and that was it. I can only hope they took away something of my ideas and research and maybe thought about them a little further. This time the discussions were more in depth, there was conversation on putting my findings into practice and could I speak to others about it at another time. It could be a that I found my audience for my research here. Saying that my two examples are the Visitor Studies Group, and NCCPE. It shouldn’t be a million miles different in my opninon.

As well as my personal achievements, the sessions I attended were incredibly useful. There were a lot of sessions to choose from but I think I managed to find ones that I related to well. If you read my previous posts from the conference I think you can get the impression of how much I took away. At previous conferences I have also felt inspired, but not quite to this extent, or at least to not quite this extent with this much understanding. I would like to think that I have gone into some of the museum studies conferences with the knowledge and understanding that I have going into this one with, and it is just a case of confidence.

My point in all this is go to conferences, try and take part, don’t just go and be a passive audience member. There are a lot of people across the country who are interested in what you are doing. They have the same passion about their field of research or subject as you do and are waiting to tell you about it. If you go ready to listen as well as tell, you will have a wonderful time. You should also make a few friends on the way,

NCCPE Engage Conference – day two – afternoon #engage_2014

My last workshop is all about interactive sensory objects and people with learning disabilities. I am looking forward to it as it hopefully will link in with some of my research as well.

Www.sensoryobjects.com

Their project began with the Access to Heritage group in Liverpool and creating a sensory experience in Speak Hall. They embraced all senses, the sensory box creaked like an old door and smelt like the Middle Ages, there was a cushion that told a story when you stroked it.
Their second group was based at MERL and a group form Reading College. They created a mooing boot! This was in response to the fact that MERL involves animals but doesn’t have any. (The mooing boot is still mooing!)
They had to adapt some children’s toys they wanted to work with to work with larger adult fingers.
Their current project is with the Tower Project and the British Museum. They use visual prompts to remind people to use all their senses when they are visiting. These are strips of paper with an eye, nose, mouth, hand and ear on them.
They are developing a set of cartoons to help everyone experience museums like this… Note to self, leave contact details with this group!
At the BM they concentrated on the Enlightenment Gallery, in there you are only allowed to touch the Rosetta Stone replica and the objects on the handling table between certain times. They challenged the group to choose and object, they used the audio guide to help them. The Tower Group has a range of people with disabilities, some of which affect the senses. Each person chose and object and researched it. The BM have linked this research to the objects on their website as well. The research includes all the senses. They came up with the idea of creating speaking labels for the museum, but they would also show images. They then looked at using materials to recreate the objects and looked at the materials used, how they smelt. How the would sound, this was all put into a “box” that on pushing a different button created a different sense. I am going to take a photo as I am finding it quite difficult to describe how amazing this is! Pics to be uploaded later.

There are lots of things to get involved in here! Switch boxes, squishy circuits with conductive playdoh and not so squishy circuits. They have adapted circuits and made them easier for people to use and work out how they would like their box to switch on.

I am actually not sure I am doing this project any justice!

NCCPE Engage Conference – day two – morning #engage_2014

I wasn’t going to post about the plenary sessions, but this presentation has just captured my imagination.

Michael John Gorman from Dublin Science Gallery
https://dublin.sciencegallery.com
He has really innovative ideas and interactive methods of explaining research. It also creating research output from interactions in the gallery (Infectious exhibition 2009). They get their gallery community as well as researchers to submit ideas for exhibitions. The gallery is the mechanism for researchers to get particpants, make their projects accessible and really involve groups, audiences and researchers together in creating projects. Some projects have resulted in peer reviewed output (important for organisations that need this for registering their output).
Some projects worth looking at are Infection, Human Cheese*, and the speed dating projects they have worked on.

Our smaller discussion throws up issues of funding for this, it is cutting edge, who pays for the development, who pays for the researcher time…and with the opening of a second gallery in London, it throws up issues of only engaging with the privileged few in the capital. Do they charge their audiences? So many questions, but in an ideal world this is fantastic idea if it was implemented across the country.

*this is not a typo, you could smell cheese cultivated from celebrity belly button bacteria, bit not eat it, that would be gross.

My first workshop today is about how to engage researchers with public engagement. This one is a clear priority!
The group is smallish but we have representatives from “learned societies” (British ecological society as an example), universities and other organisations that use researchers in public engagement.
The National Academy of Engineers focus their engagement on the engineers themselves to that they have the skills and resources to engage with other audiences. They have been fostering this thinking for eight years and have been tracking the progress of engineers involved. They also work with festivals and PE practitioners on increasing their engineering content.
The Royal Society of Chemistry have a outreach team and programme which is slightly different from PE, so they focus on schools, students and the public but through talks, educations resources etc. Their PE team is new and is trying to expand on the outreach to include PE.

One of the point that came up was being able to publish off the back of the public engagement, this links into the Dublin Science Gallery, but it relies on PE being embedded into the thinking of the academic. We also discussed the confusion of what can be done, schools outreach, PE etc, and everyone is calling it something different. There is training on offer but it is from different organisations and if the academics are not aware that there is a range on offer, not always in their field, how do they find out about it.

We need some common definitions of public engagement, education and outreach and then throwing in formal and informal education into mix!

Cancer Research UK said they have issues with actually recording whether an academic have completed public engagement. They have a tick box, it is yes or no but doesn’t really explain what it is they have done and what outcomes. This is one of the issues with the terminology, is going to a conference public engagement? What about a public lecture?

Grant applications ask for public engagement and more and more the suggestion is a conference or paper as PE, they funding councils are starting to comment on the type of engagement proposed. This is going to become a big issue for academics! The funding councils will also give extra money for PE if the proposal is good. Evidence and evaluation will be required for it though. This can put off academics from applying for it. This might change and academics need to be aware that this could mean that without PE, funding proposals will be knocked back. Some universities have PE as part of their job descriptions for research and academic roles.

There is some discussion about post docs having to do PE “under the radar” as it is frowned upon as extra and unnecessary. This is to the detriment to the post docs as above, more institutions are looking at PE as part of the job description.

It needs to be made clear about the range of activities that constitute PE and that not every one involves direct contact with the public. More use of PE teams to facilitate this and provide training to academics and PE teams on what it actually is.

Eventually PE will become part of every day responsibilities. We need to address some of these issues now. Recognition of achievements at society and organisational level for PE is going to help encourage the importance of this.

There is a strategic business case for doing PE. If it is already in the business case then it may just need explaining and a more concise fashion.

NCCPE Engage Conference 2014 – day one – morning #engage_2014

Firstly, I had a little panic about conference dress codes. I am not going to go into this as there are loads of blogs and articles on what to wear to a conference and when it comes down to it, none of them really help!

Engage 2014 is being held at the Marriott Royal in Bristol which is beautiful, and in a beautiful location that I am not going to have time to see. So it is going on my list of places to visit.

This post may turn into a bit of a brain dump during the day, so apologies for random paragraphs. Hopefully I will be able to make it all make sense.

The plenary session included input from AHRC and HEFCE. I might have to write something later about this, it was really interesting.

My first workshop session was run by Cardiff University and was about the flagship community engagement projects they are running.
Cardiff University have a new(ish) focus on community work and have five projects in various local, national and global areas that engage with people who may not normally engage with their university. I won’t go into the projects but their lessons learnt are quite interesting.
Lessons learnt so far by Cardiff University:
Choose the most appropriate academic lead
Clear central support for the projects
Importance of good project management
Do not rely on individuals

One of the points they have made is that as they are so close to the National Assembly they take s great deal of interest in what is going on. This means that some of the MPs are following progress on the projects, so they have a priority within the minds of the higher management in the university. This is good and bad, there is pressure to deliver, but at the same time the projects are being paid attention to. There seems to be a university management wide involvement in these projects which gives everyone a stake in the projects.

One of the high profile academics teaches, researches, runs a clinic, works on innovation and also leads on one of the projects. It just goes to show it can be done, engagement does not have to be a stand alone activity or replace other responsibilities of academics. Although in some cases I think that this may take some persuading! It seems to be though that the interest of higher authorities (in this case the first minister of Wales) makes people a lot more enthusiastic to be involved and see the project through to the end.

The five projects have been adapted and built from previous community engagement projects that had identified local community needs and were already working in those areas. Business cases were put together for their executive board to show their benefits to the university and the research taking place, local community and how they fit within the regional governments priorities.

In our discussion we are talking about what communities want from engagement as often what they want and what the university wants are entirely different. CU asked existing structures, community boards, and local groups what they wanted. However this could mean that thinking in the projects needs to change as they may only serve the purpose of the university and not the communities which defeats the point. By listening to the communities we have the chance to listen and create projects and research that can impact policy makers locally, regionally and nationally. This could get the communities interested in the bigger policies and governance of their area and wider – look at the voting in the Scottish Referendum, those communities cared about the topic.

I have realised that my notes on this are getting really long so I am splitting it up into morning and afternoon as well as by day! There is so much to write, so many ideas and great people to talk to about their experiences. More to come!