Presenter: Dr James Lees, University of York / Freelance
Theme: Engagement mediums and practice
Reporter: Lorraine Coghill
One sentence summary: A sparkling and energetic overview including tips and techniques for training and encouraging researchers new to outreach.
Description
Everyone involved in outreach remembers their first time… and this energetic and enthusiastic session with physicist, science communicator and author, James Lees, took us all back to that place, exploring approaches to support novice researchers in developing their confidence in communicating their work.
James recounted his own story, giving an honest and entertaining account of his experiences from researcher to science communicator to trainer, encouraging us to consider the importance of providing high quality, relatable training for researchers that provides a scaffold to enable them to develop their own outreach voice.
James admits to saying yes to everything and anything outreach-related and shared some of the key learning that he has found on his journey. This included his experience of not winning the 3 Minute Thesis competition. His disappointment (and initial “outrage” – said with a definite wry wink) at losing to someone who didn’t explain their “exact research” was a key turning point for him in developing this training session’s key message – “it’s how you engage, it’s not the topic”.
James put us in the place of his trainees, taking us through practical elements of one of his training sessions which focus on four key elements of better engagement: Hook, Connect, Narrative and Takeaways.
We discussed the importance of a good hook that draws an audience in, and how a good, standout title is needed to get people to attend in the first place. But then how do you make sure that people get involved when they are there? James’s tips on learning from marketing included examples of stands at science festivals with a giant sword stuck in stone and hundreds of rubber ducks.
The sword and ducks each told their own story, and James used the meeting room as a campfire for his tales, encouraging us to consider the use and influence of narrative in any outreach medium. He emphasised that it is the story that people remember, not the individual words and details, and how important it is to remind researchers of this. In scaffolding this principle, James gave three key points: 1. Make it simple; 2. Make it flow; and 3. Make it sparkle – which James demonstrated with a little surprise for us all!
To put this all into practice, we were given the challenge of applying James’s framework to some obscure (and non-STFC related) research, bringing out an array of potential new outreach projects, and a lot of inspiration and new ideas.
Throughout, James encouraged us to think bigger and more creatively. His principle of imagining the biggest, weirdest, most sparkly thing and then coming down to reality gave an inspiring perspective. As the last session at Interact, it was wonderful to throw away the reality of things like budgets, timelines and staffing and just imagine outreach with no barriers, because, as James said, sometimes someone will achieve that big, bright thing.
Key messages
- The importance of giving a supportive, relatable scaffold for researchers new to outreach.
- Consider four key elements of better engagement: ‘Hook’ ‘Connect’ ‘Narrative’ ‘Takeaways’.
- Remember to tell a story: Make it simple; Make it flow; Make it sparkle.
- Start big then work back from there.
Resources
Website: https://tinyurl.com/jamesdoessci
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