Parallel Session 3: Unconventional Outreach - STEM on the Road
Tuesday 9 April 14:45 - 16:30
According to the author Professor Robert McKee, "Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today." And as communicators, we witness first-hand the power of storytelling.
It’s certainly not our only way to engage with the general public, but for compelling outreach activities, we need to create the best story possible.
What, if we find a way to use storytelling and pump-up our outreach activities with some steroids?
We at EUROfusion have decided to put storytelling at the centre of our main outreach activity – a 300m² travelling exhibition. We realised that it would impact our public engagement project at a structural level, follow through on storytelling and let it shape the entire project philosophy. What started out as a plan to refurbish and update the existing travelling exhibition about fusion energy called “Fusion Expo” has turned into something on a grander scale. This one activity will become a combination of exhibits; about the physics, engineering and experiments, a participatory activity to provide stakeholders and European citizens’ perspective on energy, a contemporary art exhibition, a pervasive game and an educational project for future engineers. How can all this be done within the same project frame and the same budget?
These are the questions we will address. How has a shift from exhibit based logic to storytelling impacted our outreach activity? How this shift created a paradigm in every aspect of our public engagement content? How a slight change in perspective and the way we tell our story has profoundly shaped the way we use media tools and technology, from the classic hands-on to the newest technology such as dwelling detection. Follow our new approach: and we are excited to present our UKAEA apprentices who will be our speakers for this presentation!
The philosopher Hannah Arendt said: "Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it." Join us at the third PARI conference; we want to show you the extra magic that we will be able to create in our outreach by using storytelling.
