Celebrating ScienceFest's huge success!
Organisers celebrate most successful festival yet
Organisers of one of the region’s most exciting festivals, Newcastle ScienceFest, are celebrating after witnessing record visitor numbers and generating international interest for their most successful festival to date.
Over 50,000 people from across the UK visited the festival, which ran from March 12 - 21, with over 200 international contributors, who travelled from places as far afield as Holland, Germany and the US to take part in ScienceFest's headline event, Maker Faire.
Taking place at venues including the Centre for Life, Times Square, Discovery Museum and Newcastle University, Newcastle ScienceFest offered visitors a diverse range attractions, with 100 events over 10 days, ranging from entertaining fun family-friendly events like Bubbles Balloons and Jelly Babies with Brainiac's Dr Bunhead, to cutting-edge serious science events exploring topics like The Future of Stem Cells. Other events like U3A Science, also attracted older audiences, including people in their 90's.
Popular international craft and tech event, Maker Faire, formed ScienceFest's opening weekend, seeing over 200 DIY and technology enthusiasts from across the world, coming together to showcase their off-beat inventions, celebrating individual inventiveness and grass roots originality at the Centre for Life, Times Square and Discovery Museum. Highlights included Rubot II, the world's fastest Rubik's Cube solving robot and the Power Tool Drag Racing Championships.
Councillor John Shipley, leader of Newcastle City Council and a Board Member of the Regional Development Agency which provided over £200,000 towards the festival, said: "We are really pleased that the festival has been such a success. Embedding an understanding of science, particularly for young people is crucially important. I thought the programme of events was wide enough to suit all interests and deep enough to get to the heart of a number of major scientific issues."
This year saw the introduction of the festival's After Dark programme, a set of exciting science events catering exclusively for adults, with highlights including Designer Bodies; a late night opening of Centre for Life with Australian body engineer Stelarc, famous for growing an ear on his forearm; The Science of Good Sex at The Living Room; Bitter and Twisted, a science cocktail evening exploring taste sensations with Jack Cain's Gin and 3D Disco, ScienceFest's official closing party at Stephenson Warehouses.
ScienceFest also offered an impressive range of serious science lectures and other events including: Aspirin the Wonder Drug, with Prof Sir John Burn; a lecture on the chatter of chimps, with Dr Katie Slocombe and Should we Trust Science; featuring Nobel Prize winner Sir John Sulston at The Great North Museum. Other events included Science in the City, a day of free events looking at the future of science at Newcastle University.
Over 100 volunteers took part in Newcastle ScienceFest 2010, helping with everything from engaging the public in the 'physics of hula hooping,' as part of the festival's launch event, to knitting jumpers for trees as part of a mass guerrilla knitting project across Newcastle city centre.
Newcastle ScienceFest is delivered in partnership with the Centre for Life, Tyne and Wear Museums, Newcastle Science City, Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council and culture10 as part of NewcastleGateshead's world-class programme of festivals and events.
Chair of Newcastle ScienceFest 2010 and CEO of Centre for Life, Linda Conlon, said: "We've had great fun working with partners to put together a festival of fabulous experiences. What unites all of these activities is a desire to communicate the wonder of science and to really emphasise that it isn't just a narrow subject from the school curriculum. It is a vibrant and diverse field that has a part to play in virtually everything that we do on a daily basis.
"But ScienceFest didn't just put the spotlight on spectacular science. We also worked to tackle controversial, topical and often scary issues such as climate change, stem cell technology, and dementia. The festival is all about reengaging science with society, making us all better informed and able to play an active part in shaping our future.
"I am very pleased with the enthusiastic response we received from the public for our 2010 programme, which has seen the festival enjoy its most successful year to date."
Peter Arnold, Chief Executive of Newcastle Science City, said: "The festival helped bring the importance of science to life for thousands of people of all ages. It was brilliant to see so many people being excited by the opportunities science has to offer and how vitally important it is in our everyday lives. Newcastle ScienceFest proved extremely popular thanks to the packed programme of high quality events and it is another valuable contribution to the city's aim to become a national and international destination for world class scientific investigation and understanding - and long may it continue."
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