This round up has been updated, you can find the latest version here..
This month on Of Schemes and Memes, science festivals are in the spotlight.
The fourth World Science Festival held in New York is currently in full swing. To keep you updated on our coverage of this annual event, we thought a summary post linking to our science festival content and others, may prove useful.
Summary of our world science series so far…..
Science festivals – part 1: The World Science Festival: an interview with Tracy Day
In this post, we interview Tracy Day, co-founder and executive director of the World Science Festival, to learn more about how this creative festival came about. We find out how her background in production has inspired the intersection of art and science.
Science festivals – part 2: Cambridge Science Festival
This is a guest blog by Nicola Buckley, Head of Community Affairs, University of Cambridge and Cambridge Science Festival manager. Nicola has been directing the festival team since 2004 and set up the Cambridge Festival of Ideas in 2008. In her post, she gives us a brief history of science festivals and looks at what inspired the Cambridge science festival.
Science festivals – part 3: Cheltenham Science Festival
We welcome a joint guest post by Sharon Bishop, the Executive Director of The Times Cheltenham Science Festival, who has been involved with the last six of the ten Cheltenham Science Festivals, and Kathy Sykes, Professor of Sciences and Society at Bristol University and Festival Director since they began in 2002. In this post, they highlight the successes of Cheltenham festival, born from which was their pioneering FameLab project.
Science festivals – part 4: The World Science Festival Opens!
Celebrities from the worlds of science and art gathered at the Alice Tully Hall in New York City for the opening of the World Science Festival. The festival commenced with the Opening Night Gala, featuring a spectacular reading of Radiance, The Passion of Marie Curie and this post summarises the powerful production
Science festivals – part 5: Science Storytellers
A gathering of journalists, writers, scientists and others interested in the fine art of telling a science story, met at the Paley Media Center in New York, to hear from successful authors about their skills and experiences with science storytelling. This post summarises the thought-provoking discussion.
Science festivals – part 6: Telling Science Stories in Print and on the Web #wsf11
A summary of World Science Festival panel, Telling Science Stories in Print and on the Web, featuring many of the big names in science writing and journalism, from the “blogfather” of science blogging, Bora Zivkovic, to the Guardian’s Emily Bell via author and PLoS blogger, Seth Mnookin. Includes a Storify archiving the tweets from the event.
Science festivals – part 7: Spotlight: Women in Science #wsf11
A post that rounds up the World Science Festival’s Spotlight event that aimed to strip away the trimmings of a traditional science presentation and add cocktails to the mix. A Storify presents the tweets from the session.
WSF Blog
The World Science Festival Blog is offering instant reactions from some of their pioneering events. Each post gives a brief summary of the event, extracting memorable quotes and pictures:
Instant Reaction: Telling Science Stories in Print and on the Web
Instant Reaction: Improvising Science
Instant Reaction: The Dark Side of the Universe
Instant Reaction: Women in Science
Instant Reaction: The Radical New Science of Longevity
Elsewhere on the blogosphere
Scientific American has also been giving us some great coverage of the World Science Festival, including some live blogging!
Guest post by Neda Afsarmanesh who appraises the Opening Night Gala, featuring the reading of Radiance, The Passion of Marie Curie.
World Science Festival: The Dark Side of the Universe [Live Stream]
Philip Yam blogs live from the Dark Side of the Universe event at the Skirball Center in New York.
Information Is Everywhere, How Can Science Protect It?
A post about Keeping Secrets: Cryptography in a Connected World, which whets everyone’s appetite for the WSF Cryptology event.
Even More…
If you are interested to learn more about the World Science Festival’s unique programme and selection of shows, salons and discussions, stay tuned as we are planning to report back with coverage of more of the key events via write-ups, archives of the Twitter conversations and hopefully even some video footage.
If you were unable to attend some of the events you can also watch most of them on WSFtv.
Nature Medicine’s blog, Spoonful of Medicine, will also be covering some events so stay tuned for their reports.
Nature Network Bloggers join in…
Not only have we gone science festival mad, so have our bloggers and what better way to end our round up than with Viktor Poor’s comical example of what you should wear to a science festival!
