National Science Week!

National Science Week was from the 10th-17th August, and it was crazy. I was unable to find the chance to write a blog entry over the last few weeks due to my typical hectic schedule juggling work with Uni with my placement, but thankfully I wrote myself some fairly thorough notes so that it was still easy to share the experiences.

As the largest state with  diverse population, National Science Week works to showcase the science, technology, engineering and innovation that drives our communities and our economy; it is an annual event, which this year incorporated a new range of events and activities celebrated through art, film, comedy and theatre (National Science Week 2013).

Scitech's involvement in National Science Week included the festival event on Saturday the 10th August, and Science Cafe on Wednesday the 14th August. National Science Week Festival was a day of celebration and family fun, incorporating science, education and entertainment for all ages. It was also a great way to introduce some of the headlining organisations showcasing their science endeavours over the week. The day kicked off with a live broadcast of the 720 ABC Perth breakfast program, followed by interactive science displays by local organisations. Dr Chris Smith from The Naked Scientist also provided some entertainment! Fundamentally, my role for the National Science Week Festival was mainly carried out post-event through media event listings sent to local websites promoting events and places to visit around Perth, and making up a list of scheduled social media updates to add to HootSuite touching on the daily highlights of National Science Week.

Science Cafe was an event held in Winthrop Hall at UWA for 300 secondary students from schools around WA - completely different atmosphere. Students were invited to spend morning tea with around 80 inspirational scientists from a range of organisations including UWA, Curtin University, ECU University, Murdoch University, Scitech, DEC, CSIRO,WA Museum and SKM. Sarah Lau from the Chem Centre hosted the event, which gave students the opportunity to speak one-on-one with scientists to find out what inspired them to take up science and where their science careers have led them. Chris Smith from The Naked Scientist, also made an appearance at this event as a keynote guest speaker. My primary role at this event was to liaise with the photographer and assist him in getting quality photographs of a balanced range of schools across several media circulation areas. Part of this was making sure students had their name tags on display so that they could be identified later. I also assisted my supervisor, Charlotte, with noting quotes by guest speakers as potential leads for the post- event media release.

The week following Science Cafe, Charlotte and I sorted through the photos that were taken at the event (part of being a NFP means time is frequently consumed performing such tasks), put together the post-event media release and emailed it through to relevant media contacts! 

Phew! Getting a behind the scenes look at the impact of NFPs on education and science in younger audiences was an awesome and very rewardable experience!

That's it from me for now, until next time...

Natasha Weeks
Curtin University, Bentley

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