Tag Archives: British Science Association

London Science Festival launches at UK’s Brunel Museum on Oct.23, 2013

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The 2013 London Science Festival (Oct. 23 – 30, 2013) celebrates opening night with a 170-year-old engineering feat. From the festival news release,

To celebrate the launch of London Science Festival 2013, the Brunel Museum and Science London (British Science Association) present an evening of engineering, fun, music and cocktails on the evening of Wednesday 23 October [6:30 – 11 pm], on the site of the World’s first underwater tunnel.

Mingle with some of the UK’s top engineers and find out about engineering past, present and future with a range of talks, exhibitions and activities around the Brunel Museum’s historic buildings.

Join staff from the Museum to discover the history behind this historic site, explore the frontiers of modern engineering with our talks programme curated by Science London, or relax in the café/bar.

…

The Brunel Museum in historic Rotherhithe is directly above the Thames Tunnel which opened 170 years ago this year. This is where Isambard Kingdom Brunel began his extraordinary career, aged nineteen years. Working with his father Sir Marc Brunel, he helped build the first tunnel under a river anywhere in the world.

The Grand Entrance Hall, where young Brunel nearly drowned, has been opened up for the first time. Beneath the Museum gardens, a tiny doorway and scaffolding stairs lead down into a hidden amphitheatre half the size of Shakespeare’s Globe.

Join us in celebrating science, engineering and innovation on a truly remarkable historic site.

» Tickets for  The Brunel Ball, at the Brunel Museum on 23 October, are on sale now at www.londonsciencefestival.com/2013/brunelball  / £20 per person

Here’s a picture of another event which took place at the Thames underwater tunnel,

mage: The Thames Tunnel entrance [downloaded from http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=vluq6geab&v=001HyWuGvOOR8hNOVNibcaCgtiyMYN5lTDvVLLdNph-SgAGsHxJG40BlBXkxjiOPBVQQMARcOAzSYXeW7O_XPTe0f2i2RMxjyfvYv1ypeZBF4uFT_0mZQMb6MLma4b0iBHQJyBiTokLSVtYVA-2Bg5YHVsr81pU37S7DNqMiktVkRy5pleByEtRKw%3D%3D]

mage: The Thames Tunnel entrance [downloaded from http://campaign.r20.constantcontact.com/render?llr=vluq6geab&v=001HyWuGvOOR8hNOVNibcaCgtiyMYN5lTDvVLLdNph-SgAGsHxJG40BlBXkxjiOPBVQQMARcOAzSYXeW7O_XPTe0f2i2RMxjyfvYv1ypeZBF4uFT_0mZQMb6MLma4b0iBHQJyBiTokLSVtYVA-2Bg5YHVsr81pU37S7DNqMiktVkRy5pleByEtRKw%3D%3D]

You can find the 2013 London Science Festival’s programme of events here.

Sciences are creative too

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There’s an interesting essay by Roland Jackson, Chief Executive of the British Science Association on the UK’s Dept. for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) website about British attitudes to science and the notion that science is part of ‘culture’ in the way that the arts are. From the Science and Public Attitudes project page on the website,

I have always been interested in what the Public Attitude Surveys tell us, and not least to use the results to challenge those who still persist in claiming that the UK public is ‘anti-science’ when it is clearly nothing of the sort.

This time round I developed a particular interest in the concept of science and culture, leading out of the work we did on the Science for All Group (http://interactive.bis.gov.uk/scienceandsociety/site/all/). In our Report and Action Plan we identified a number of actions to encourage UK cultural institutions to take a strategic approach to the sciences in culture, and we recommended that public perceptions of science and culture should be explored in this upcoming Survey.

It has always irked me that the arts community in the UK seems to have purloined the words ‘culture’ and ‘creativity’ as if they are synonymous with the ‘arts’. For example, the European Capital of Culture bidding process, and that of the UK City of Culture, have no requirement for a science-based cultural programme (though the use of digital technologies is graciously and instrumentally encouraged in the latter to ‘maximise participation and access’). Not that I have anything against the arts, but my concept of culture and of creativity certainly includes the sciences, and they are implicitly excluded in the way these bidding documents are written and interpreted.

So, it is good to see the Public Attitudes Survey 2011 seeking to test out how the public views science and culture.

I look forward to seeing the Public Attitudes Survey when it is released in March 2011.