EXPLORATHON 2021 - European Researchers' Night in Scotland

Our proposal builds on the success of EXPLORATHON in Scotland from 2014 to date and will deliver a blockbuster edition of the NIGHT across all of Scotland, utilizing both digital events as well as face-to-face events. Our pan-Scotland partnership learned significant lessons in our online only delivery in 2020 which will allow us to reach more audiences, leave a lasting digital legacy and upskill researchers in how to achieve digital as well as traditional engagement. We will engage with audiences in the main urban centres in Scotland as well as in hard to reach audiences in rural areas and geographically isolated communities in the Highlands and Islands. We will use our full expertise of marketing, social media and styles of engagement to mobilise our researchers and train them to engage with the public. We will use a variety of different styles of engagement from comedy to drama, to online and fun hands-on science experiments to enthuse the public about research and researchers. Working with key partners across Scotland we will showcase to secondary and upper primary aged school children the array of research careers that are on offer and bust myths about researchers.