Satisfy your curiosity as pop-up centre opens to all

The public have been invited to have fun in an interactive science playground being set up as one of the many events taking place during Science Week 2014. The "pop-up" science centre will appeal to all ages from five and up, say organisers.

The Curiosity Lab at the Smock Alley theatre on the Liffey quays in Dublin will serve as the opening event of Science Week, with the lab open for a two-day run on November 8th and 9th. The lab is the creation of Festival of Curiosity Ltd an Irish company that specialises in helping people, old and young, to connect with science, technology and engineering.

"It was developed as a new way for people to explore the world around them and to engage with science, " explains the creative director of Festival of Curiosity, Ellen Byrne. There is a huge, largely untapped public interest in science-based events and she hopes the Curiosity Lab will cater for at least some of that pent-up demand.

She established Festival of Curiosity and the resultant Curiosity Lab with business partner and chief executive Vince McCarthy. The company was formed after the EuroScience Open Forum meeting that took place in Dublin during July 2012, says Byrne. A part of that event included the City of Science, a series of public events with a scientific theme that were staged in Dublin and at other centres around the country throughout 2012 to help raise public interest in things scientific and potentially to coax more young people to take on science, technology, engineering and maths as a career choice.

Unexpected hit

The City of Science programme during the ESOF meeting was an unexpected hit with the numbers participating much higher than anticipated. “It had 600,000 visitors across the country during that week in 2012,” she says. “There was such a huge appetite for this and such a good feeling coming from it in Dublin that we decided to set up Festival of Curiosity and stage a summertime science festival in Dublin.”

Funding was needed to pull the summer event together and the two science entrepreneurs quickly found supporters in legal firm Matheson, the Royal Dublin Society, Science Foundation Ireland and Dublin City Council. "They got behind it so we could make it an annual event and it ran successfully in 2013 and 2014," says Byrne.

There is no doubt about whether people harbour an interest in things scientific given both Festival of Curiosity events sold out completely. About 30,000 people participated in the 2013 event and this rose to 40,000 for 2014. There were about 80 events at this summer’s festival with its huge audience taking part over just four days.

It was such an instant success that the partners and their backers decided to hold a similar “condensed” event during Science Week. Effectively the Curiosity Lab becomes a science pop-up shop where people can come and explore. “We take some of the best and most popular things during the festival and then install them in Smock Alley,” says Byrne. “The lab is a hands-on interactive science playground. We have modular robots, talking robotic heads, Lego and different kinds of engineering and building activities,” she says.

The Curiosity Lab also has a bubble show where “bubbleologists” explain the physics behind the giant bubbles they create. There is a magical science show that will entertain visitors of all ages with its blend of physics and chemistry. And there is an evening event targeted at adults but also suited to children related to how a person might become a space tourist, she says.

Space travel

The space tourism event involves retired NASA astronaut Greg Johnson and Dr Niamh Shaw, a performer, scientist and engineer who wants to awaken people’s curiosity. “They join in conversation about the future of space travel,” says Byrne. Johnson has already been a space traveller and Shaw has developed a performance piece about her desire to give it a try,

To Space, Perchance to Dream

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Byrne likes the idea of staging the Curiosity Lab in Smock Alley given its historical links. It is one of Europe’s, let alone Ireland’s, oldest theatres. “It is great to have a science pop-up in unusual places and Smock Alley is such a cultural space. It is important because we are trying to make science part of the cultural fabric of Dublin,” she says.

It is possible to just drop in to the Curiosity Lab but there is no certainty you will get in. Byrne says it is best to go to the website festivalofcuriosity.ie and book your place.

All of the daytime family events are available free of charge. Those in the evening, such as the future of space travel, cost €7 but remain free of charge for children when accompanied by an adult, Byrne says.