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Lord Sainsbury of TurvilleScience Centres & Museums - Engaging the Public with Science & Technology |
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I am delighted that ECSITE has decided to come to the UK for its annual conference this year. This is the first time that the conference has been held in London and I would like to extend a warm welcome to the delegates from all over the world. The ECSITE network has done a splendid job in putting together such an interesting programme, and I am pleased that a number of UK Government Departments and Research Councils are sponsoring the conference and contributing to the sessions. A confident relationship The theme that I want to explore with you today is the key role that science centres and museums can play in engaging with the public and helping to forge a more confident relationship between science and society. A confident relationship is important because science and technology can offer many benefits to society and to the economy, but these benefits can only be realised with the support of the public. Science raises some uncomfortable issues – such as the ones you are discussing this morning in your session on the challenge of the life sciences. We are on the brink of exciting developments in science that will affect everyone's lives – and along with the benefits come potential risks which cause understandable concern. People rightly expect proper safeguards against risks, and full and open discussion about the values, benefits and risks of scientific developments. Towards dialogue In the UK, we are also moving away from the one-way communication model of the "public understanding of science" movement towards a dialogue between scientists and the public. The public are not against science, but they have legitimate concerns about particular developments. Simply telling them about the developments without entering into a dialogue and understanding their concerns achieves little. Society should be encouraged and enabled to take an active part in the debate about the science and its applications – from stem cells to nanotechnology, from sustainable energy to forensic science. This new mood for dialogue was most clearly articulated in the influential report on "Science and Society" published in February 2000 by the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology. The main message of the report is that Governments and the science community need to be better at listening, better at understanding and better at responding to the public's concerns and priorities. The report has been warmly welcomed by the UK Government and by many organisations and individuals involved in science communication. Having said that, the British public has a positive view about science. In a survey that the Office of Science and Technology published with the Wellcome Trust two years ago, three-quarters of the British population claimed to be amazed by science. People can also see the benefits that science and technology bring to the country and to themselves – eight out of ten agree that Britain needs to develop science and technology in order to enhance its international competitiveness, and two-thirds agree that science and technology are making our lives healthier, easier and more comfortable. But the survey also shows that there needs to be better communication between scientists and other members of the public, for while two-thirds of people think that scientists want to make life better for the average person, a similar proportion agree that scientists should listen more to what ordinary people think. There was some good news from a complementary survey by the Wellcome Trust of the role of scientists in public debate. Eighty-four per cent of the scientists questioned believe that they have a duty to communicate the results and implications of their work to the public, and more than half of them had done so in the past year. Almost six in ten scientists said that they would like to spend more time on public dialogue activities. Public trust is vital to progress and innovation. That trust is easily lost and hard to win back. We can't afford to dismiss people's concerns, nor to exaggerate them. The Government attaches great importance to re-building a confident relationship between the public and scientists, and we are seeking to increase public confidence in science by providing an independent and transparent system of regulation and by encouraging debate on the ethical and social issues. Prime Minister Tony Blair, in a speech this May on science, summarised the position in these words: "We need better, stronger, clearer ways of science and people communicating. The dangers are in ignorance of each other's point of view; the solution is understanding them." The role of science centres I believe that science centres and museums have an important role to play in taking forward this agenda and engaging the public with science and the issues that it raises for society. In England, more people visit museums than go to theme parks and pop concerts. Over 30 million people visit science centres and science museums each year in the countries of the European Union, offering a wonderful opportunity for raising public awareness of current research, providing a neutral venue for debate and dialogue, and stimulating an interest in science among young people. The UK is proud of its science museums. The National Museum of Science and Industry and the Natural History Museum, which are hosting this conference, are among the four largest science museums in Europe and have a long tradition of bringing the public together with science and technology. The science centre sector in the UK has also grown significantly in the past 20 years, from half a dozen players in the early 1980s to some 80 science and discovery centres today. This follows major investments; in particular over the past few years through a £250 million injection from the national lottery to build new centres, matched by a further £250 million from a variety of other public and private sources. Some of the new centres focus on a single theme or area of science – for example the National Space Centre in Leicester, Our Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh, the International Centre for Life in Newcastle and The Deep in Hull; while others – such as At-Bristol and the Glasgow Science Centre – cover the whole range of science and technology. The challenge The challenge we must now face together is how science centres and museums can deliver the new science and society agenda and I would like to give you some examples of the innovations that are already taking place in the UK. The Darwin Centre The Natural History Museum is, I think, leading the world with its imaginative and innovative venture at the new Darwin Centre. If you haven't seen it yet, you should certainly take the opportunity to do so while you are here at the conference. As well as giving the public access to the 22 million specimens in its vast zoological collections, the Darwin Centre also brings the museum's research scientists into direct contact with the public, both by opening its laboratories to public view and through daily talks, events and tours. This interaction and dialogue can only strengthen a mutual understanding between scientists and the public. The Dana Centre Next September, the Science Museum will also be taking an important initiative to engage new adult audiences in topical issues in current science and technology. The Museum will be presenting a regular stream of innovative events in its new Dana Centre, right next to the Darwin Centre. The centre is intended to engage young adults in the age range 18-40 and will be seeking to use new digital technology to ensure that these events reach a wide audience outside the centre. Although the centre hasn't opened yet, it has already been trying out some new ways of engaging people with the issues that are relevant to our lives. The pilot debates have included such varied issues as: "art, creativity, science & madness"; "euthanasia"; "cosmology and the big bang"; "what does it feel like to be a clone?" and "are we protected from inland flooding?" BNFL visitor centre at Sellafield For controversial issues it is all too easy for the debate to become polarised and unproductive. A recent initiative by British Nuclear Fuels Ltd at their visitor centre at Sellafield is very interesting in this context. As part of its efforts to foster a genuine public debate, BNFL invited the Science Museum to exercise complete editorial independence over an exhibition, aptly named 'sparking reaction'. Inside, you enter an animated billboard where views on nuclear energy, ranging from the very supportive to the deeply hostile are given equal prominence. You can also find yourself in the first Immersion Studio in Europe, an interactive cinema that enables the public to tackle some of the difficult issues of future electricity generation. It allows the public to make their own choices about nuclear power, and to pass these choices on to others. In Sellafield the debate surrounds you and continues, via digital links, on the web for schools and for thousands of others. The Science Museum has brought a small demonstration version of the immersion theatre to London for the ECSITE conference, so I hope that you will be able to see it there. SciZmic: science discovery clubs network A fourth interesting initiative is SciZmic – a network which links schools science clubs with science centres. The network runs events at science centres, and offers projects, activities, competitions, newsletters and a discussion forum for science clubs. In its pilot year, 450 young people came to SciZmic events at science centres, over 40 clubs have signed up, and SciZmic provided the junior judging panel for the annual Aventis science books prize The SciZmic network will, I hope, be one of the lasting legacies from Science Year (now called Planet Science), a government initiative to inspire and enthuse young people into learning more about science. Planet Science will also be running a programme of outreach activities through science centres, targeting schools that do not normally participate in activities organised by their local science community or in national initiatives. The schools will include those whose students are struggling with science, those not already using their local facilities for whatever reason and those where resources are stretched. The project will encourage each organisation to establish sustainable partnerships with schools that outlast the provision of the Planet Science grants. While the focus of the project is schools, Planet Science hopes that the outreach project could enable schools to act as centres for their communities - and bridge the gap between child, parent and the resources of the local science community. National Respect Campaign Science centres and museums can also help to encourage more people from ethnic minorities into science. The National Respect Campaign, which was supported by the Office of Science and Technology and the Co-operative Society, for example, ran a programme of activities in science centres around the UK earlier this year to highlight the educational and career opportunities available in science, engineering and technology; and put the young people in touch with African-Caribbean professionals working in science careers who could act as role models and mentors. Research Councils working with science centres and museums Several of the UK's Research Councils are also working actively with science centres and museums to engage the public with science. For example, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council is piloting a project called'Meet the Scientist'which uses science centres as neutral venues for the research community to engage in dialogue with the public. The scheme has identified and trained local researchers in how to engage the public with their work, and it has provided materials, mentors and the management of events involving the researchers. So far, two very successful events have taken place in Bristol and Cardiff. EPSRC and the Natural Environment Research Council also sponsored a major exhibition on climate change at the Science Museum this year. The exhibition was one of the largest that the museum has mounted in the Wellcome Wing. It was opened by environment minister Michael Meacher and included many interactive exhibits and opportunities for people to air their views on climate change. The launch of the exhibition in March coincided with the break-up of a huge Antarctic ice shelf, and scientists from the British Antarctic Survey were able to provide displays featuring the latest news on the science as it was happening. This is a great example of how scientists and museums can work together to get cutting edge topical science to the public. STEM delivery In the UK we have a network of 53 SETPoints, which are complementary to the network of science centres. We have charged them with ensuring that every schoolchild in the UK has the opportunity to participate in at least one science, technology, engineering and maths related activity by the time they are 16. Whereas science centres are fundamentally location-based, albeit usually with outreach programmes, SETPoints are outreach organisations concerned with channelling the vast range of industry-supported promotional activities aimed at schools so as to improve their effectiveness. There are already examples of good, mutually-supportive relationships between science centres and SETPoints. There are examples in Bristol, where there is co-operation over such events as CREST Awards – an accreditation scheme for project work - and the Intel Challenge; in Manchester where the SETPoint has run joint events with the Museum of Science and Industry aimed at increasing the number of teenage visitors to the Museum; and in Glasgow, where, as well as joint events, the science centre and the SETPoint have jointly trained students in presentational skills. SEAs Although it has not yet had much involvement with the science centres sector, I'd like to mention our Science and Engineering Ambassadors programme (SEAs). We have set this up to strengthen and develop existing outreach programmes that enable young professionals with science and technology-based careers to visit schools. They act as role models for the young and help teachers to set the school subjects in the context of the world of work and to see the potential that a science-based career offers. SEAs provides a high quality framework for this activity. This is a genuine win-win situation for all concerned, teachers and schools, the young people, employers and the Ambassadors. I believe that science centres and museums can play a major role in engaging the public in a genuine dialogue about science and the issues that it raises for society. This challenge is an extremely important one if we are to realise the benefits of science. We have taken some useful steps forward in the UK but have a long way to go, and much to learn. This is why this conference is so valuable. It will enable all of us to exchange ideas and forge new partnerships, and make a critical difference in this important dimension of our national lives. |
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Other speeches by Lord Sainsbury of Turville
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