Looking back on Wetenschnapps XL 2022
On Tuesday October 4 Wetenschnapps XL took place, an extra-large episode of the series of inspiration and development sessions organised by the Centre for Science and Culture. Over 100 researchers and supporters of the EWUU Knowledge Alliance working on public engagement exchanged knowledge and experience in this field.
Panel conversation
To start, Margaret Gold (Citizen Science Network NL, Dutch website) and Prof Helianthe Kort (TU/Eindhoven and University of Applied Sciences Utrecht) discussed collaboration between citizens and researchers. What are the benefits of such collaborations for researchers? And what is in it for participating citizens? How can citizen science make the research results relevant for people whose personal lives are affected by the research topic?
I now have a better idea of the value of citizen science for both scientist and citizen.
Shared Stories
In the Shared Stories sessions, colleagues shared their experiences and lessons learned with citizen science, team science and other forms of collaboration to achieve good public engagement.
- During the Seed Fund session, Anouk Keizer and Els Rose shared their experience on applying for the Public Engagement Seed Fund. This money allows researchers to realise a public engagement activity. Read more about the Seed Fund - take note, the new call opens in the week of October 24!
- At the Citizens & scientists session, Saskia Stevens, Liesbeth Feikema and Wieke Eefting talked about who the citizens are who participate in their projects. How do they reach them and how can they make the collaboration work?
- At Citizen Science and data, Rik Janssen, Dorien Huijser, Timothy Price, Fleur Froeling and Jonathan de Bruin discussed the data challenges you can expect in citizen science projects, and how to tackle them. For advice, UU researchers can contact Research Data Management Support at info.rdm@uu.nl.
- In the Team Science session, Erik van Sebille, Nieske Vergunst, Stans de Haas and Stephan van Duin talked about how scientific and support staff can work together to enable better public engagement. Stephan wrote a blog about it. Among other things, on why we should remove the distinction between scientific and support staff.
Els Rose's story was a great example of how makers and art can be part of the knowledge process. Art/collaboration with artists is essential for Public Engagement activities.
Inspiring workshops
Following this, participants learned with and from each other during the workshops:
- Impact Plan Approach: How do you and your team create a strategy for effective, impactful engagement activities? Together with experts Piet Lommerse and Jelte Verberne from NWO, participants created an impact plan with - and for - their team. You can read more info via the links below:
- Madelijn Strick and Frances Wijnen shared how to measure the impact of your own activity. Read more information on the Impactlab website. Participants also worked with this board game (in Dutch) to develop a route to their own measurement plan.
- The dialogue training by Cathelijne Reincke and Laura Mol covered how to engage with a general audience about research.
- Using this roadmap, Miranda Thoen and José de Wit showed participants how to design a public engagement activity.
I now have a better idea how to help researchers write an impact plan.
The impact measurement (yes, we did this too) among the participants shows that almost all of them want to participate again next year and recommend the event to others. On to Wetenschnapps XXL!
Had a super fun Tuesday, and very useful too! It is good to think with each other and meet all the people you don't normally meet so easily.