Last week I wrote a blog post about what it’s like to organise a Soapbox Science event. Today was the day of that event, and honestly, this morning I was a pretty big ball of stress, anxiety (what if none of the speakers showed up? what if it rained? what if we didn’t have an audience?!), and lots of nervous excitement. Much of that stress was likely due to the fact that jet lag meant I was wide awake at 4am panicking about being wide awake at 4am.
Anyway, today was the day of Aberdeen’s first Soapbox Science event, and I’m pleased to report that it was a great success! I’m going to keep this blog post short and sweet; really I just wanted to post some photographs of the event and reflect a bit on how brilliant our speakers and volunteers were on the day.
Each and every one of our speakers carefully and thoughtfully engaged the public with their research – from star formation to the make up of cancerous tumors, wound healing using worms as inspiration, and work that’s aiming understand the experience of being ‘missing’ from the perspective of people with dementia and their carers. Our speakers covered lots of different topics, and used chocolate, hula hoops, pipe-cleaners, sponges and fake finger prints to bring their research to life. They did a fantastic job, and I’m so happy with how the event went! I haven’t had chance to look through the evaluation forms yet, but initial counts suggest that we managed to engage with over 800 people over the course of the event’s 3-hour duration – not bad at all!
Again, thank you to our wonderful speakers that made this event such a success, and of course thank you to the huge team of volunteers that showed up on the day to ensure everything went smoothly – we couldn’t have done it without you 🙂
Heidi R. Gardner 
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