Getting Curious: Why it’s time to rethink the Science Centre.
— Ginny Russell, Digital Communicator
We’ve all felt it. That little voice in our head, the little twitch of the brow as you wonder ‘What if…’
What if the earth stopped spinning?
What if we could see what happens after death?
What if time travel was real?
What if I push this big red button?!
Many Bristol residents (and those further afield) know that we’ve changed our name and our logo. But the story runs deeper than that. It’s a much, much bigger picture and this new blog is where we’ll be sharing our journey with you.
Our journey from At-Bristol science centre to We The Curious began with our own niggling, curious questions…
Who are we?
What do we have to offer?
Why do we come to work everyday?
So we asked. We asked our staff, our members, our visitors, our non-visitors and our city in an effort to find out if we were still relevant, if our charitable mission to ‘make science accessible to all’ was still meaningful.
Arguably, in our age of digital technology and lightning speed internet connections, for many science is now more accessible than ever. With YouTube channels, you can tune into passionate people doing incredible science all over the world! (And in your pajamas, if you’re me.) Google can answer the most weird, specific science questions in milliseconds -in fact, I’m 99.999% sure that you’ll have ‘Googled’ something sciencey in the last week. And we have social media. Pages, forums, channels, that can all connect like-minded science enthusiasts, with the most niche interests. Whether you like sassy robots or want to track sharks across the ocean, there will be an account for you to follow.
Now that we have the entirety of human knowledge available at our finger-tips, do we need a big building full of sciencey stuff for people to come and look at? Or do we need to change, to become more meaningful?
We set out to discover what our city, particularly those traditionally under-represented by science centres, want from an organisation like ours. We were excited to see a real desire to shift the status quo, coming from our members, visitors, non-visitors and the city of Bristol. They wanted us to be more challenging, to take a stance on real issues. They wanted us to be more inclusive, to be a place for everyone, for arts and culture, not just science.
Moreover, as an educational charity, we have a responsibility to be as relevant and inclusive as possible. To break down those physical and cultural barriers that stop people at our threshold. From this, we re-purposed the science centre mandate. Our quest for curiosity was born.
Curiosity doesn’t kill cats. It sparks ideas, thoughts and questions that can change the world. Our relationship with curiosity needs to be re-written, so that we can empower everyone to ask questions, to create the next generation of thinkers, pioneers and ground-breakers. The more curious we are as a society, the more resilient, compassionate and connected we are as we step into the unknown.
“Okay,” you say, “we get it. Curiosity is awesome, but where does a science centre fit into this picture?”
At We The Curious, we’re proud of where we’ve come from, and the role that we’ve played in people’s lives, but we don’t want to be a place that is passive — where facts and figures are poured into your brain. We want to be a hub for testing new ideas, exploring, experimenting, where it’s OK to fail and try again. We want to open the doors, start conversations with the unheard voices of this city, and to be truly collaborative and progressive in our approach. We’re not just aiming for more people to access science but to completely shift how people see it. It is messy, creative, collaborative, living and for everyone — an integral part of culture.
We took the first leap in September 2017, relaunching ourselves with a manifesto for change, along with a brand new name and visual identity. Our mission to create a culture of curiosity now sits at the heart of everything we do and we began by collecting questions. From across Bristol, in every postcode, community, nook and cranny of our city, we found out what makes our citizens inquisitive — and we were blown away.
From our own simple questions that started this journey, we now have over 10,000 (and still counting!). Real questions, from real people, about the things they want to know.
Equipped with this menagerie of musings, we’re using our city’s questions to shape and inform all of our activities. They’ll take centre stage next year as the inspiration for the complete transformation of our ground floor exhibits, with a total investment of £4.3 million.
We’ve come a long way since our inception, and we’re continually evolving and growing. It’s an amazing journey — and we’ve only just started!
This new blog is our place to share with you the amazing people, voices, stories and projects that make We The Curious who we are. So, expect lots of different posts from people and partners across our organisation. Everything from sustainability to stargazing, culture change to comic strips, no topic is off limits as we continue to transform.
We’ve got so many more exciting adventures ahead, so join us as we step into the unknown and redefine what it means to be a science centre.
— Written by Ginny Russell, We The Curious Digital Communicator
