Thanks to
the BES Roadies for organising such a brilliant workshop earlier this week run
by Science Made Simple (SMS). We were
greeted at Charles Darwin House, London by an eager and excited group of people laying
out props which kept us guessing for a good twenty minutes- a washing up bowl,
some glycerine, a tube with a plastic glove on the end, a slinky and a
polystyrene cup… what on earth had we let ourselves in for? I had just started
to worry about being made to ‘perform’ in front of a group of strangers without
any caffeine to help me, when David and James from SMS immediately made me feel
at ease.
They reassured
us that over 75% of the general public were interested in science and trusted
scientists almost as much as doctors and clergymen! So we already had a captive
audience - they were going to teach us how to tap into it. The morning kicked off with a ‘speed dating’
exercise. Here I found out that I had
shared interests with most of the people there including my love of real ale,
cycling, knitting and being hungover in a boat early in the morning with
someone shouting at me.
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| What happens when you sit on a balloon? |
We soon
progressed into small groups and picking some random object out of a bag (and
when I say random, I really DO mean random). The aim of this exercise was trying to sell said item, in its original
role or not, in a 1-minute advert. My
group rest-assured, managed to market a rather phallic looking orange juicer as
a double sided, ahem, pleasure-maker… Other groups were not so filthy but
managed to come up with inventive and creative ways to sell e.g. a star on a
stick as a sleep inducer, a spiky ball as a productivity enhancer, a fried egg
maker as a posh coffee holder, and a rubber glove as an exfoliator. These performances were all filmed (unfortunately for us) so we could
watch and cringe at them later.
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| Gingerly sitting down... |
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| ...on the world's second largest whoopee cushion |
After
some excellent tea and biscuits, David went on to introduce us to his street
busking science tricks. There followed
the rest of a very active day involving sitting on balloons (bum gets hot), amplifying
what a slinky really sounds like when it bounces using a polystyrene cup (like
space!), and my personal favourite, sitting on an enormous whoopee cushion to
demonstrate how sound is created by vibrations.
We then applied all these inspirational and novel techniques to our own
ideas about how to make ecology come to life for people of all ages. The day finished off with a bit of a
brainstorming session between the groups with some potentially brilliant ideas
emerging, e.g. people on stilts, a food web/-chain made out of people, an
assassins game based on a food web, an ecosystem chair, an insect sorting hat,
fungi smells and a bee waggle dance. The
next step is to set out the logistics of these ideas and make them happen!
I learnt
a lot from the day such as making as much eye contact with your audience as
possible, smiling constantly and open body language. It also helped to know how simple busks could
be whilst remaining fun, effective and memorable. So here’s to a hopefully hilarious summer with
the BES roadies and a little prayer for sunshine!
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| Testing a few busks |
Kate
Salmon, 8 April 2013
