Our Head of Programmes and Delivery, Andrew Farrer reflects on the conversations and learnings at the recent Association for Science and Discovery Centre's (ASDC) annual conference.
"It’s always great when the science centre family gets together. Even Storm Agnes couldn’t stop the Association for Science and Discovery Centre’s conference going ahead. It was a wet and windy day to arrive in Belfast, but the host science centre, W5, was an inspiring (and sheltered!) place to discuss all the amazing work that goes on in our sector.
This event is such a melting pot of people and passions. I was involved in two panel sessions and the insight on developing our teams and working with communities in their spaces that I got to have conversations about were fantastic – and the best humble brag of the event goes to a visiting science communicator from Western Australia who helped demonstrate the power of going to your communities, especially when your local communities are hundreds of miles from our science centre! It made us all think about how distance isn’t the biggest barrier – when we can talk about the distance of a 20-minute cycle and 20-hour drive both containing major challenges for people, it really shows why knowing people and giving them ownership of their science centre experience is so important.
So many more great things – the first, draft release of a set of evaluation areas that all science centres can report against, discussions with academics about understanding emotional journeys, science centres being a hub for community directed research – it was a fantastic time to reflect, be inspired, and plan for the future.
Here's to another year of being awesome (humble brag, sorry!)."