Category: Blog

BBC Focus, Part 2

Before going to Focus, I finally sat down and asked myself the question of what I want to get out of it. I’d kind of been avoiding that question, as pure curiosity didn’t seem to be the best answer.

Originally, I found the uni magazine project so interesting partly because magazines were a format I’d always written off, for no real reason- spending time actually developing one meant I appreciated what they could do. So I’m interested in exploring them more, to find out if they’re an area of communication I could spend more time with.

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BBC Focus, Part 1

I had a very interesting week last week, as I got to spend 5 days at BBC Focus learning more about science magazines and how they’re put together. So, here’s how my week went…

Day 1

Heading into my first day, I was very nervous, mostly because I didn’t know what to expect or what they expected from me. I wasn’t sure whether they’d be expecting a complete beginner, or someone already knowledgeable. I was worried about being thrown in at the deep end, or doing tasks wrongly. However, I didn’t need to be too worried, as the team seemed friendly and the person in charge of keeping an eye on me was very nice- I was even ok asking him questions about the software by the end of the day.
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Volunteering: British Science Association

So I finally remembered to attend a BSA meeting, after probably a year of reading the email chains but not participating.

Since the last time I went, there’s been plenty of turnover. Many of the people taking leading roles last year have moved away, but there were also a lot of new faces at the meeting- for most, it was only their first or second meeting. Mostly, everyone was either a student, or already working in a scicomm or science role- I’m the only person studying scicomm but not working in it.

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Festival of Nature

After helping set up for the festival, I couldn’t not go to investigate.

Usually, I’m not particularly interested in events like festivals; in the same way that science centres tend to appeal only to an audience who would already be interested enough in the subject to visit science centres, festivals seem like a method of science communication that’s probably only preaching to the converted.

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Volunteering: Festival of Nature

Last week, I finally got around to volunteering (it took me long enough).

I signed up to help set up for the Festival of Nature; while not technically sci-comm, it’s still useful volunteering experience, and a chance to get used to events in a relatively comfortable environment. So far, I’ve been put off from signing up to most of the volunteering events I’ve seen because of their social aspects, and the potential for making a fool out of myself in talking to new people.

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Resources

I’m a digital hoarder. Right now my laptop has thousands of hours of unplayed games on it, hundreds of archived podcasts and as many unread articles and eBooks.

With the amount of tutorials and resources stored and accessible on there, a motivated person could learnt how to do anything they wanted by now. I’ve barely done anything. I’ve had free access to so much knowledge and ignored almost all of it.

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Volunteering: Freedom of Mind

Today I had my first proper meeting for Freedom of Mind (a mental health/wellbeing festival I’m volunteering at).

It turns out that we’ve grown a lot bigger than the organisers originally intended…there’s over 100 people involved now, which is really exciting. So there’s now a lot more organisation, structure etc that anyone expected. It’s going to be interesting to see how big this gets, and whether the goal of a small-scale Fringe festival happens.
It would be amazing to be part of something that big.

However, I’m also worried there’s nothing I’ll be able to actually help with. Most of the creative events are things I have no understanding of, such as spoken word performances and art installations. The rest are things that need people who can go up to strangers and connect with them,who are confident interacting and cold-calling, and can organise and follow-up requests. Those aren’t really skills I have.

Hopefully the mega-brainstorming session next month will bring up ideas and events that I can be useful for. I’m glad I volunteered, as this sounds really meaningful, but I don’t yet know anywhere that I can actually do something to help.

Happy (Old) Year

2015’s been a weird year, and I don’t know what to think of it yet.

It’s almost been two years in one- everything before August, v.s returning to uni. I normally don’t do this kind of reflection, but this year deserved stopping and thinking about. Things that I expected to be there, like church, fell out of meaning; new things to explore appeared instead.

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