by Prof. Magdalena Fikus

The two words, festival and science, immediately conjure up a spectacle that celebrates science in a way a layman can understand and finds interesting. Such a festival should showcase science in all its diversity and above all help people understand that you cannot live in the modern world without constantly coming into contact with science.

All daily use items, such as a computer or ball-point pen, a car or plastic bag, a laser or table lamp, have all been designed and built thanks to science. Thus contemporary people cannot "escape" from science although often they may not be aware of this. People also regard science as a specialized subject not intended for daily discussion. Although scientific theories may be difficult to understand without detailed knowledge, just the will to exchange opinions and to discuss topics is all that is needed to talk about science. Therefore even a layman can ask a scientist a question that perhaps the latter had not earlier considered and which could lead to new scientific discoveries.

There are thousands of functions, called festivals, picnics, open days, science days or weeks, organized all over the world for scientists to meet the public. Among them are shows, workshops, discussions, lectures, film screenings, theater performances, competitions, trips and exhibitions. You can categorize these functions by age, interests or location. In Portugal, for example, a string of lighthouses along the shoreline marked a celebration of the sea. The city of Fribourg/Freiburg in Switzerland organized the first European Science Festival for pre-school children. Germany opened a center for "delusion of the senses." Poland organized summer trips, known as "green schools," for IT students to small mountain villages. The variety of functions and their agendas attest to the fact that there is a constant search to find the most efficient ways to bring science and society closer together. Colleges are already available to train science advocates, and the European Union, under the auspices of its Science in Society program, is announcing competitions to find ways to promote science. An international meeting in Brussels in 2006 gave high ratings to Poland's Science Festival and Picnic in Warsaw as well as the "green school" initiative. The Brussels meeting underscored the educational role of such initiatives, as illustrated by those organized by Poland, as not only beneficial to schools but also useful in a broader context. Moreover, it applauded the diversity of initiatives since one of their goals is to encourage young people to look for a career in science and technology.

Festivals, however, no longer suffice, and it is time to look for more apt ways to promote science in Poland. Science promotion needs to be taken outside the cities and it should continue all year round. This need will be satisfied in part by the Copernicus Science Center currently under construction in Warsaw. At the moment, various road shows are being organized throughout the country to encourage people to "experiment," along with meetings for families and children under the banner of "How Does This Work?" It is also time for teachers to look at atypical ways of telling their students about the environment we live in. This is exemplified by Warsaw's Science Festival School, an institution that has been promoting molecular biology in Poland for the past five years. Another example is the Science Café initiative for meetings with scientists in public places in cities such as Warsaw, Cracow, Katowice and the Gdańsk-Sopot-Gdynia tricity. Last but not least, it is necessary to build good relations between science and the media because the latter can bring science closer to the general public with the help of new technology.