Festivals

One of the goals of the Microbestiary is to reach out into the broader community outside the University of Wyoming. One way that we can do this is by attending and presenting at science festivals and meetings.

MAX 2019 Space Festival

Erin Bentley and Sara Griffith attended the MAX 2019 Space Festival in May of 2019 with the goals of figuring out how to put together a festival (so that in the future the Microbestiary could put together their own) and seeing how to integrate Native American populations into outreach projects through examining how MAX had done it with their "Star Stories" exhibition with Lakota youth.

San Francisco Report

Abroad Festivals

There are several large science festivals that are held throughout the world. Taking the bestiary to one of these conventions could draw international attention to the bestiary and it's associated grants. There are two so far that are large scale and could potentially be a good fit for our bestiary work. The festivals at Edinburgh and Abu Dhabi would be good festivals to look into presenting at.

• Emily Armitage (Unlicensed) look into how we get a vendor application for the Edinburgh festival in 2020
  • Emily: It appears that the 2020 festival has a Call for Ideas Guide, Vision Document outlining the festival's theme, and a link to submit a proposal to present at the festival. The proposal submission deadline is less than a month away, due Friday September 13th at 5pm. 
• Sara Griffith Look into the Abu Dhabi festival to see if it's a good match for the bestiary and how we apply to present

AAAS 2020

This exhibition seems like the most promising. It's held in the United States and has a clear application process. The theme is "Envisioning Tomorrow's Earth", snippets from the statement about the conference include:

"This Annual Meeting celebrates the scientific position on appreciating and addressing the future of planet Earth by considering and collaborating with advances across disciplines, and the ways in which scientists are building networks with policymakers and the public to work more effectively and best take advantage of the many new developments that science and technology is introducing at an ever-increasing pace."

Topics of focus that they are looking for that the bestiary could potentially fit into:

1. Biology at the molecular, cellular and organism levels, and how discoveries in this area may lead to further human well-being
2. Determining the value and means of maintaining natural ecosystems and biological diversity in a changing plane
   • The whole group should take a look at this and see what they think as far as attendance and discussion

Beakerhead Festival 

This festival takes place in Calgary, AB, Canada from 9/18/19-9/22/19. It is described as a mash up of art, science, and engineering. It is a registered charity that works year round to bring arts and engineering together. While current events are not posted yet, past events include community workshops, hands-on activities, talks by famous inventors, scientists, and performers, as well as community programs for collaborating organizations to show off discoveries and creative work. 

The thought was to attend this festival in 2019 and then register for a community program in 2020, as registration for 2019 is closed. Collaboration can be done in two routes: you can present with an existing beakerhead program that our program agrees and matches with, or we can create our own event and program. It seems that creating our own would be the best route in this situation. 

This seems like an extremely fun and educational festival where the bestiary would fit in nicely. 

• Sara Griffith make a proposed budget 

We likely won't be able to attend on Bestiary money, however, we are interested in taking the bestiary to festivals and presenting. We need to look into if these festivals have some kind of assessment–do they keep track of how attendance at their festivals affects people post-activities. By figuring this out, we might be able to narrow down the list of festivals we would like to present at. 

• Emily Armitage (Unlicensed) will look into the different festivals and ask if they have some kind of pre/post assessment
  • Report: 
  • Response from Rebecca Smyth from the Beakerhead festival: "... Beakerhead is largely funded by a large Canadian science communications/promotions grant, from a governmental organization called NSERC. NSERC has specific policies about impact measurements for grant reporting, so that is the system we use to evaluate the impact of our Education programs at the main Beakerhead festival in September, and throughout the year. I don't believe we currently have a system for evaluating the impact on the general public. Beakerhead is coming up in just over a month, so it's too close to get you involved for 2019, but if you're interested in learning more for 2020, we can circle back in October-November."