Science Live: Surveying the landscape of live public science events

In 2015 I had the distinct privilege of being part of a team of practitioners who brought together science communicators, researchers, and external supporters under funding from the Wellcome Trust to create a landscape study of the the live public science events sector. There were two meetings one in Cambridge, UK and one in Cambridge, MA, US that produced hours of recorded conversations, notes, and in depth reflections from participants. The report that came out of this was less about delivering a succinct fix-it for the field and more of an overview of what the temperature of the sector was. This report, published in 2016, identifies many different types of public science events that occur in the field, as well as delving into what those mean, their prevalence, and then quotes from the meeting about various facets of these micro-topics.

Each section has "what we know" and "what we would like to know" and in reviewing the work six years out, it's amazing how much of this has changed and become irrelevant while also being still deeply foundational in the work itself.