A comparative study on Science Festivals between the United Kingdom and Egypt
Author: Mohamed Daoud – The American University in Cairo, Egypt
Science Festivals are one of the most recent initiatives in the landscape of the current public communication of science. Although, Science Festival is a good way of Science communication and public engagement, yet little research has conducted to date to investigate this increasingly global phenomenon as a survey conducted by European Science Events Association (EUSCEA) in 2004 described Science Festivals as a ‘relatively new’ phenomenon.
The author aims to provide a generalised model of how to host a successful science festival in developing countries like Egypt, highlighting the challenges that might face the founders and organisers of the event and providing practical guidelines in terms of the scope and its development, financial and operational models, and scale and size of the science festival.
Accordingly, the Author conducted semi-structured interviews to collect data concerning Science Festivals in Egypt and the United Kingdom. The interviewees were representatives from Cairo Science Festival, Egyptian Science Week, Zewail Science Festival, and Manchester Science Festival.
The results of this work prove that Science Festivals are good example of applying the “dialogue” and “conversation” approaches that depend on two-way of communications to engage the general public with cutting-age science and technology. This work has confirmed that there are broad approaches and diversity of the term “Science Festivals.” This work offers further improvements for the relationship between science and society. Finally, this work gives a clear evidence that the public communication of science is growing in Egypt.
The author will present his results highlighting a generalised model with practical guidelines of how to host a successful science festival in developing countries in a form of infographic presentation.
The author has not yet submitted a copy of the full paper.
Presentation type: Visual presentation
Theme: Transformation