Leisure and Pleasure: Science events in unusual locations

Abstract

Building on concepts relating to informal science education, this work compares science-related activities which successfully engaged public audiences at three different ‘generic’ locations: a garden festival, a public park, and a music festival. The purpose was to identify what factors contribute to the perceived success of science communication activities occurring within leisure spaces. This article reports the results of 71 short (2–3 min) structured interviews with public participants at the events, and 18 structured observations sessions, demonstrating that the events were considered both novel and interesting by the participants. Audience members were found to perceive both educational and affective purposes from the events. Three key elements were identified as contributing to the success of the activities across the three ‘generic venues’: the informality of the surroundings, the involvement of ‘real’ scientists, and the opportunity to re-engage participants with scientific concepts outside formal education.

Keywords:

• Informal education
• Leisure
• Generic venue

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express their gratitude to Clare Wilkinson and Emma Weitkamp for their reviews and comments on early versions of this paper. The anonymous reviewers also provided very useful advice and input during the review process, for which we thank them. The work was partially supported by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal) though a Post-Doctoral research grant attributed to Ana Margarida Sardo (reference SFRH/BPD/46840/2008).