European Researchers’ Night: Making Science more Inclusive and Accessible to Everyone

We watch, hear and read.
We can’t ignore it.

Sophia de Mello Breyner, Poet 
 

You have to be able to see it, to be it.

Billie Jean King, Tennis Champion & Social Activist 
 

I had no interest in it,
then I looked inside and now I am enchanted by it.

David Shirley, Visual Artist
 

It was with these quotes that all participants of the European Researchers' Night (ERN), organised by the RAISE – Researchers in Action for Inclusion in Science and Education consortium, were welcomed at the Champalimaud Foundation, in Lisbon, on the 29th of September.

For the second consecutive year, the RAISE consortium, composed of the NGO Native Scientists (NS), the Champalimaud Foundation (CF) and the João Lobo Antunes Institute of Molecular Medicine (iMM), organised the ERN, a public event celebrated across Europe, with the aim of making science more inclusive and accessible to everyone.

As Joana Moscoso, coordinator of the RAISE consortium and NS, explains “To reach members of society who continue to be left out or who feel detached from science, we have been working with children and young people from areas of priority educational action and regions that traditionally have limited access to science, as well as building partnerships with scientists, artists, athletes, communicators and educators who, like RAISE, seek to contribute to expand the horizons and have a positive impact on the future of different communities”

Over the course of ten hours, and with the last full super-moon of the year as a background…

- Received 1700-2000 participants (1200 in 2022) - organisers and people who ran activities (22%) + adult visitors (41%) + children visitors (37%).

- Collected feedback forms from around half of the participants - which is an impressive number if we consider that typically the impact assessment of this kind of event is based on feedback collected from <20-30% of the participants. 

- Appeared on the major national media outlets and even made it to prime time TV (note: while a Sport Lisboa & Benfica-Futebol Clube do Porto match was going on!). 

“So far, we have been receiving very positive informal feedback and, once we analyse the data from the feedback forms and finalise our impact assessment report, we’ll publish it on RAISE’s website.” explains Catarina Ramos, curator of this ERN and coordinator of Communication, Events and Outreach at CF.

The diversified programme of this ERN is a result of collaborations established over the last few years and, according to Inês Domingues, coordinator of the Communication team at iMM “We hope that with this event we have offered a rich context to not only strengthen and establish new connections, but also to create opportunities and make resources available to those who need them most.”
 
Catarina Ramos concludes “it’s hard for us to highlight a particular activity, experience or moment, but building such a diverse programme in terms of topics and formats while promoting an open dialogue between students and teachers from underserved schools, scientists from different domains, teenagers from the deaf community, children from social solidarity organisations, artists, families, athletes… it's something we will never forget.”

RAISE is a consortium funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions of the European Commission.