Targeting hard-to-reach groups – Work Package Three discussion

This session brings the members of each work package together to share their progress and learning and prepare a presentation to share the purpose, activity and learning from the work packages.

You can listen to some fab feedback given to the conference from what happened here:

Or read a little more below…

The group from Work Package Three focused on targeting hard-to-reach groups, and tackled the questions:

• Why did what you did matter?
• What can you conclude about meeting the high level objectives of the CASC project?

1. A science day in a rural city in Hungary

There is no science museum in the region, no scientists, and a lot of people without access to the internet. A significant number of people in rural areas not accessing media, or even reading a newspaper. The project used traditional media, such as flyers and posters, to access those hard-to-reach groups and engage people with the science day.

2. A mixed-ability competition in Cyprus.

The team in Cyprus created FameScience – a talent show for promoting science and mathematics. The contestants were tasked with explaining a scientific phenomenon in under three minutes to non-experts. This helped to develop learning materials, such as cartoons and videos and was a move away from the traditional methods.

3. An exhibition in a shopping mall in France.

The idea was to go where the general public was, rather than target specific populations as it was difficult to identify the hard-to-reach groups. The team is planning to open a public cafe in the middle of a city so that everyone can access science.

4. An exhibition in a shopping mall in Sweden

The Swedish group set up a science exhibition in a shopping mall which focused radiation in mobile phones. The idea was to focus on an area people would be interested in, and was relevant to people’s lives.

5. Taking science to nursing homes from Thinktank

Birmingham’s Thinktank took objects from the science museum to care and nursing homes to engage with elderly people. The project was a success and helped Thinktank to learn how to work with this hard-to-reach group.

Everybody is a hard-to-reach group concerning science.

Some other issues that were raised included:

• How do you define a hard-to-reach group?
• There isn’t a common European policy due to differences in defining hard-to-reach groups.
• You can mix the objectives with leisure activities to attract people.
• “How do you get people willing to join in with education activities?”
• We can reach people in schools – the captive public. Hard-to-reach groups in France are the non-captive groups not present in places such as schools.
• People that go shopping in the day during the week may be more likely to be the hard-to-reach groups.
• “One of the problems is people know the outcomes, but don’t know the science behind the solution.”
• “Try to separate pure science and the technological applications.”

We need people that are experts in training and science communication… so when we talk about science, people will be listening as they are able to understand.

• ‘Relevance’ is a key word.
• “The story is important. But where do we start the story? To know, to be, or to do?”
• “As the storytellers, are we in the story or outside of it?”
• “Helped us to define a few places where we could meet the public.”
• Hungary – Secondary school is too late to convince people to go to university. Tried primary school, perhaps also too late. Had to start at kindergarten to link people to science and start the process of engaging students.
• “Focus on the problems each group had in their work”

Conclusions:

• Focused on trying to clearly define our publics.
• Question was “Who are our publics?”
• The groups had different visions and definitions of the public.
• Through the experiments some chose a place where everybody goes, some went to hard-to-reach places with no access to science, some focused on a precise population (Thinktank)