Science Week: From small acorn to giant oak tree . . .

Want to meet an astronaut or design a satellite? Or maybe you would like to see mathematics turned into a fun subject that anyone can understand.

With events like these on offer it can mean only one thing – Science Week 2015 is only a few days away.

Science Week is Ireland’s national festival of science, with hundreds of entertaining events planed for across the country. It is all focused on enthusing young people about science, but it also tends to draw in the adults too with everyone enjoying the more than 800 events planned for the week from November 8th-15th.

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Science and maths educator Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin (centre) at the launch of Science Week 2011

World-class speakers are flying in from abroad, there will be plenty of presentations that really will make science fun and of course any number of bangs and booms and rockets in the laboratory demonstrations.

We have come to take for granted the wide range of things that will arise during the week but this abundance of events was not always the case. Twenty years ago, in 1996, the first “Information Technology and Science Week” had fewer than 50 events and it was hardly national, given most were clustered in university laboratories and the offices of large IT companies.

Forfás, the then government advisory body, organised the event with the simple aim to raise general awareness of the benefits of science and information technology to society and to interest students in the subject.

It was relatively low key but the idea – if not the official title – proved to be an overnight success with the number of organisations and people willing to take part on a voluntary basis rocketing by the time the second annual event got underway.

Professional bodies, voluntary groups, colleges, businesses and the public sector combined to organise 50 events countrywide for the renamed “Science Week”. Events ranged from conferences and lectures to interactive exhibitions and debates, and competitions for primary school students.

Science Week has grown from strength to strength into the truly national event it is today. There are large-scale fests to mark the week, such as the Galway Science and Technology Festival that attracts more than 250,000 over its two-week run. There are also plenty of lower key events, such as the fine range of presentations and talks offered by local libraries.

The week is now organised by SFI Discover, the Government's science awareness programme run by Science Foundation Ireland. The success of Science Week, however, depends more on the effort put into it by the hundreds of people who organise and stage local events, says the foundation's director general Prof Mark Ferguson.

“This is really about coordination. SFI provides some funding and coordination but mainly the work is done by enthusiastic individuals,” he says.

Better events

The foundation helps groups stage better events and seeks to boost the professionalism of what is being put on offer.

“Science Week has gone from being a good amateur event with limited geographical reach to a more professional, more engaging, more mainstream event,” he says.

“It is about general engagement with science and scientists; it shows that scientists are not aloof, they actually get out there with the people and start talking. That is really important,” says Ferguson.

The enthusiasm of volunteers sustained Science Week in its early days but there was little funding to help this, says Peter Brabazon, who was appointed in 2004 as director of the then government’s public awareness body Discover Science and Engineering (DES).

“In 2004 Science Week was relatively limited. There were others doing events but things weren’t coordinated,” he says. This in part was a reflection of the limited €160,000 budget but he was able to boost this to more than €5 million by 2009.

This helped DES to build a microsite so that adding events could be done online and people could peruse listings of what was available in their areas during the week.

Brabazon believes that Science Week remains an important event that could support Ireland’s development goals. It helps students and parents see degree options they might not have considered and points towards a variety of career options. “These messages need to be communicated,” he says.

Immediate hit

Galway stages the largest single Science Week happening, first held in 1997. It has had to move into larger venues several times because of public interest and is now held in the Bailey Allen Hall on the NUI Galway campus, says Tom Hyland, chair of organising body the Galway Science and Technology Forum.

The then minister for science, technology and commerce, Noel Tracey, saw the potential of the first Science Week and he urged Hyland – then working in IDA Ireland – to organise a local festival to coincide with the week, says Hyland. The volunteers stepped up and Galway's first festival took place. Like Science Week, it was an immediate hit.

There was little company involvement in the early days but as the festival grew so too did the interest shown by businesses. Firms in the region now participate as sponsors and as participants, he says.

“They are interested because it is a good way to communicate with the public, to talk about careers for students and because these companies are generous and keen to support this, it makes it possible for all of the events to be offered free of charge,” he says.

Dublin Institute of Technology’s involvement also goes back 19 years when it organised demonstration lectures in its labs for secondary students, says Dr Siobhán Daly of the school of physics in the College of Sciences and Health. She is also the institute’s Science Week coordinator and has been there from the beginning.

Demonstration lectures

Initially people in the school of physics did all the running, viewing it as a way to promote the subject to the students and get them enthusiastic about science.

“Back in those days we used to do ‘science insight’, lots of interactive demonstrations with students using the equipment and talking to staff and students here,” she says. “It was very exciting to do and the students really gained from it, but it became far too big. In the early days we had maybe 400 or 500 over the few days it ran but the numbers wanting to come became enormous.”

It now delivers demonstration lectures with at least nine planned and up to 12 for 2015. These will cater for up to 3,000 students during the week, she says.

“I think it is very important and it is one of the highlights on our outreach calendar.”