SciComm South West Conference 2024

Want to shape the programme? Submit your ideas to one of the below categories and we’ll pick a selection that reflects the diverse interests of the community. Deadline for submissions is Friday 8 March 2024.

Traditional presentation with Q&A

Can you wow audiences in 20 minutes or less? What insights can you share with the community and what insights can they offer you?

These presentations will give speakers the opportunity to talk about projects they’ve been working on to celebrate successes and/or ask for help from the community. Be prepared for a 15 minute presentation with five minutes Q&A.

Show and tell

Do you have examples of best practice? Do you have an inspirational story to share with peers? What advice do you seek?

Whether it’s an engaging science experiment, a rap about the reproductive system or a collection of stories from people experiencing the effects of climate change, we want to hear it! You’ll have 20 minutes to share your ideas with our audiences, in as creative a manner as you choose.

The fix it factory

What can we do to widen participation? How can my idea wow audiences? What innovative ways are there to get (more) funding?

Put forward your challenge and we’ll crowdsource some solutions. We’d suggest five minutes to outline your problem, with 15 minutes for us to find the solution.

We have now closed proposal submission and will be sharing the programme soon.

SMASHfestUK is an award-winning festival which was designed ‘in the community, with the community, by the community’  through participatory design and action research to create the UK's first design-led inclusive STEM and Arts festival. The festival developed evidence based principles of engagement, immersion and narrative transportation to work with young people from areas facing socio-economic challenges and intersecting disadvantages as creators, producers, facilitators and audiences. This created welcoming and meaningful events and productions that attracted a high proportion of audiences new to informal STEM and Arts events and who were representative of the host areas. Their process and practice challenged some existing assumptions about what inclusion really means.

In this keynote, Lindsay and Wyn will reflect on the evolution of their principles and methods through a series of lenses over time, across practice landscapes and through neurodivergent perspectives. Discussing the design of their methods, approaches and programmes, they will explore how SMAShfestUK aimed to create inclusion that produced a reciprocal sense of belonging, of ownership, of resonance and meaning to all participants. They will discuss how to co-create programmes and experiences that embed agency, celebrate and build identity and embodiment. Finally they’ll reflect how, although progress has been made in their own practices, continual development is critical and how this is supported by an ‘everything is a prototype’ mindset.