Brighton Science Festival
Neurons firing
Dust off the test tubes, lab coat & goggles – it’s time for the eleventh Brighton Science Festival
Happy birthday, Brighton Science Festival! And in true paradoxical style, it celebrates its tenth birthday with its eleventh Festival.
2005 – 2014: The Years Of Struggle
When the Festival started a decade ago, Wikipedia was a pretty crazy notion, Facebook was a mild irritant in Harvard, Twitter was not even a remote possibility, and 40% of our visitors didn’t use a computer to view the programme. The figure now is 25%, so progress has been made, though not as fast as you might think.
When it started, there were hardly any women taking up science as a career. No change there either.
When it started, what the brains behind the venture were doing was called the ‘Public Understanding of Science’. Eventually, someone spotted that the acronym PUS had unfortunate connotations, so a government committee decided upon ‘Public Engagement with Science and Technology’, or PEST for short … that didn’t last long either. Nowadays they do ‘Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths’, or STEM (though some say the Arts ought to be added in, to make STEAM). They welcome all science – all the -ologies (except astrology; but who knows what the future may bring?).
When it started there were four events. This year there are seventy four.
When it started, people thought a Science Festival was a ridiculous idea. You couldn’t have the words ‘science’ and ‘festival’ in the same sentence; there was just nothing remotely like fun in science. Now, the Science Festival has been joined by the Digital Festival, the Big Bang, the Mini Maker Faire, and there are three science toyshops in Brighton alone. Applications for the science courses in both Universities are up and Sussex businesses are joining the party.
2015: Another Year Of Struggle
The Festival only just made it this year. Funding cuts last year saw three quarters of the sponsorship disappear. But thanks to all the people who responded to their appeal, they plugged the gap.
Le Geekend
And it is fun! There’s comedy at every turn. Richard Wiseman cut his teeth in cabaret and magic – he knows how to tell a ripping yarn. It just so happens his yarns are about the science of delusions: how little we know, how much we make up, and this year why we dream.
He’s just one of many at Le Geekend, (Friday 27 February in the evening to Sunday 1 March). Richard Robinson (‘My Manager and Other Animals’, Friday 27 February) is a busker at heart, and for most of his career. John
Hinton (‘Relativitively Speaking’, Sunday 1 March) is pure show-biz.
During the daytimes, beside five talks a day, you will rub along with cutting edge technology. The Large Hadron Collider display is designed to explain all that weird quantum stuff in simple English. Speaking of cutting edge, Kings College researchers are showing how to grow teeth. Dentures will be a thing of the past soon, as we plant teeth like sweet corn. Want a whiff of the future? Here it is, in 4D, and with added jokes.
Brighton Science Festival, 5 February – 1 March 2015, www.brightonscience.com
