iSCAN Newsletter
Vol. 10 June 2000

Spring 2000 Meeting, Birr Castle, Co. Offaly

The iSCAN Spring Meeting and AGM were held at Ireland's Historic Science Centre in Birr on Saturday, 6 May by kind permission of Lord Rosse and the Birr Scientific and Heritage Foundation. Lady Alicia Parsons was responsible for making the excellent local arrangements.

In the absence of Lord Rosse who was abroad, Mr Salters Sterling, Chairman of the Management Board welcomed iSCAN members and briefly outlined the history of the project. The keynote speaker was Ms Lizzy Cox, Marketing Manager, Touring Exhibitions at the Natural History Museum, London who spoke on 'From Amman to Zurich, the A-Z of Touring Exhibitions'. A summary of her talk is given below. Her visit to Birr was kindly sponsored by the British Council. Ms Cox's presentation prompted many questions and led on to a lively general discussion which was chaired by Dr Tom Mason.

After lunch Ms Ann Scroope gave a guided tour of the Exhibition Galleries in the former stableyard of the Castle. This tour was particularly interesting to iSCAN members as Ms Scroope described the many difficulties she had to overcome in designing the displays and in telling the story of the achievements of the Parsons family in astronomy, botany, photography and engineering.

The final event of the day was a demonstration of the Great Telescope with its 72-inch mirror which was originally constructed by the third Earl of Rosse in 1845 with the assistance of the estate workmen; this Leviathan of Parsonstown was the largest telescope in the world for seventy years. The telescope was completely restored in 1996/7 and today forms the centrepiece of the Historic Science Centre.

The iSCAN AGM was held just before lunch and included reports of activities during 1999. The Spring meeting had been held at the EPA headquarters at Johnston Castle, Co. Wexford with contributions from eight speakers. The Autumn meeting at Armagh Planetarium had Ms Alex Barnett as keynote speaker and six other speakers. Both meetings were considered highly successful and thanks were expressed to John Feehan, Dr Tom Mason and Prof. Mark Bailey for their hospitality at both venues.

Noteworthy progress had been made by the adoption of a constitution and the compilation by Dr Bill Davis of a Directory of Science Centres in Ireland.

The AGM approved the following revision of the annual membership fee structure to take effect in 2001:

Ordinary members: €40 (IR£31.50)
Individual members: €20 (IR£15.75)
Commercial members: €80 (IR63.00)
Student members: €10 (IR£7.88)

A brief demonstration was given of the new iSCAN website which had been designed by The Ardenza Group. Dr Fiona Doris and Bryan Nilsen of Ardenza were thanked for their work in building the site. The URL of the site is http://www.iscan.ie/

The following were elected to the Committee:

Bill Davis (Treasurer), John Daly, Fiona Doris, Ian Elliott (Chair), John Feehan, Brendan Finucane, Roy Johnston, Rick LeVert, Brian Maguire, Tom Mason (Vice-Chair), Sally Montgomery, Carol Power (Secretary).

From Amman To Zurich An A-Z of Touring Exhibitions
by Lizzy Cox

The Touring Exhibitions department of the Natural History Museum has existed for 10 years and in that time, we have had 138 Exhibitions in 42 countries attracting around 13 million visitors. We work with Zoos, exhibition halls, science centres and museums in a wide range of geographical locations - we have even had an exhibition in a 14th Century Italian church!

Beginning with one robotic dinosaur exhibition in 1990, we now have eight touring exhibitions covering subjects as diverse as dinosaurs, insects and wildlife photography. Over the years, we have had our share of interesting stories, from nightmare installation scenarios such as hoisting a huge triceratops model into the second floor window of a Paris museum - which really stopped the traffic on the Champs Elysées; to a tricky venue in the Middle East where we were asked to keep to the footpath because there were mines in their garden. Not one for the Health and Safety report!

Merits of a temporary exhibition programme

Why do our clients do it? By hiring in travelling exhibitions, a venue can provide a dynamic temporary exhibition programme which gives visitors something new every 6 months or however frequent the turn-over of exhibitions is. By choosing temporary exhibitions carefully a venue can appeal to a wider variety of visitors than their 'core' audience. Each new exhibition provides another excuse to talk to the press and local TV and to keep the venue in the limelight with new PR opportunities. Finally, although the hire fee may be high, it will be much more cost effective to hire in an exhibition than develop one in-house. The larger the exhibition budget, the more comprehensive the exhibition.

Why do we do it? By touring our exhibitions we can give broader access to NHM exhibits and bring our scientific research to an audience beyond South Kensington. This is one of the key objectives of the NHM's mission statement - our exhibitions abroad equal and sometimes exceed visitor figures for the NHM in any one year.

The project also generates revenue for the Museum. Touring Exhibitions is part of the Commercial department of the Museum, not the Exhibitions department. We are completely self-financing, including paying overheads to the museum whilst generating a profit which helps to make up the shortfall in the government's subsidy.

Different types of exhibition:

Turnkey exhibitions We have recently put in place a new temporary exhibitions strategy whereby we have one large blockbuster exhibition at The Natural History Museum for ten months after which we tour it.

These exhibitions are all inclusive: lighting, text, graphics, display cases, specimens or replicas. Most of these exhibitions contain animatronics as well, by which I mean robotic dinosaurs or insects which move like the real thing and are extremely popular with children and TV crews.

Our first "Turnkey Exhibition" was Myths & Monsters; the storyline was researched and developed by us and the animatronics were provided by Kokoro, the Japanese robotics company who produce all our animatronic displays. The hire fee for all-inclusive exhibitions such as these is between £20,000 and £24,000 per month.

Our newest exhibition in this category is Rhythms of Life which opens in July. Rhythms looks at the many and diverse clocks in nature which regulate animal behaviour. It is divided into three main areas, all of which can be displayed in separate galleries or in one gallery. The three areas cover Day and Night, sleep patterns, nocturnal behaviour and what triggers this. Seasons - how animals adjust to seasonal change, hibernation, migration and camouflage and finally Lifecycles which covers metamorphosis, birth, life and death. This exhibition is heavily audio visual based and has been designed to tour.

Another exhibition in this category is Voyages of Discovery. This is the first travelling exhibition to include specimens from the national collection, some of which are irreplaceable. This exhibition looks at the history of scientific exploration of the natural world and focuses on the voyages of Darwin, Cook and other explorers whose research and artifacts founded our collections.

Because it is based on our collections, and features exclusively British explorers, we decided that there is unlikely to be a market for this exhibition in Europe; most European countries have explorers of their own. Voyages will therefore only tour to institutions in the US where a fascination for historical exhibitions should ensure good visitor figures for the venues.

Also, because of the delicate nature of the specimens we can only tour this exhibition for two years. This exhibition is a whole new ball game for us. We have never toured specimens in exhibitions before and certainly not type specimens of which there are plenty in Voyages! The experience we gain from touring Voyages of Discovery will be very valuable for future exhibitions.

Main elements Since 1990 we have toured exhibitions of animatronic dinosaur models. We now have only two blockbuster dinosaur exhibitions, Carnivores and Eggs & Babies. We provide the models, replica specimens, some interactives and some text. Venues can then develop the exhibition themselves by adding items from their own collections or working with a local museum to provide real specimens.

We currently have a dinosaur exhibition in Paris where the text was written entirely by their palaeontologists and the scenery was designed in-house. They based their budgets on a projected visitor figure of 130,000 visitors in 6 months. They are at 5 months and have just reached 350,000 visitors so the extra revenue from 220,000 visitors at an estimated average entrance fee of £2.50 gives them additional income of £550,000.

The hire fee for this type of exhibition is between £15,000 and £20,000 per month. This includes our team flying in to set up and dismantle the animatronics and transport of the exhibition from the venue. The venue must provide the scenery, barriers & lighting, display cases and pay for transport of the exhibition to the venue and the production of text panels.

Mini exhibitions These mini exhibitions will be a new departure for us. From the Autumn onwards, we are amalgamating two big blockbuster insect exhibitions which are now being converted into two smaller mini-exhibitions of 250sqm with three animatronic giant insect models in each.

The big exhibitions have done their work in Europe and are too big for many provincial museums closer to home so the strategy here is to provide exhibitions for smaller venues on a long hire, low fee basis.

Smaller exhibitions with fewer animatronics mean a small team and lower costs to us. We expect to hire these two mini-exhibitions for £5,000 per month but for a minimum of 5 months. The two mini insect exhibitions will tour only in the UK and countries closer to home.

The fourth category is Photographic exhibitions and currently we only have one, the Wildlife Photographer of the Year. This exhibition features 80-90 images taken by professional and amateur photographers each year who enter the Wildlife Photographer of the Year Competition which is run in conjunction with BBC Wildlife Magazine and sponsored by British Gas.

With this exhibition, we look for one partner in each country who hires it from us and sub-lets it to venues in that country. As part of its sponsor benefits package, British Gas can choose two countries to launch it into as part of their global marketing strategy, we then hire the exhibition to other countries. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition is easier to transport than our large robotic exhibitions and has therefore extended our reach to countries as exotic as Kazahkstan, India and Qatar.

Considerations for touring exhibitions

During the exhibition development process, we assess the exhibition for its potential to tour both from a content point of view and a cultural point of view. In designing an exhibition to tour there are also compromises to be made.

Until recently our Exhibitions department has developed exhibitions with one venue in mind, the NHM and have therefore been able to use less durable materials than we need for touring. There are other considerations too, for example if you want to include video footage with a voiceover, this means costly translation, re-dubbing and synchronising for venues so we have to avoid it. Our experience of AV on tour is not always good particularly with delicate equipment such as projectors.

Another point is that graphics need to be easily replaced and durable which can compromise the design and aesthetic look of the exhibition. We also have to be aware of the design of the text panels to ensure that they are large enough to take two or even three languages for bi-lingual countries such as Switzerland, Belgium and Luxembourg

These additional features come at a cost so Touring Exhibitions ploughs back some funds from tours into new projects in order to fund the extra costs of building an exhibition to tour.

Types of contract

We have developed our contracts over the past ten years and have adapted them each time a new situation arises. This information was very valuable for the ECSITE organisation, in the development of their guidelines for contracts for travelling exhibitions. There are three possibilities here:
Fixed fee contracts
Revenue share contracts
Collaborative projects

With a fixed fee contract, the fee is calculated per exhibition month from the opening date to the closing date. A hire fee is agreed upon which includes our team coming to the venue to assist with the setting up of the exhibition.

In exceptional circumstances we are able to negotiate a revenue share but the NHM is becoming increasingly risk-averse so these are becoming less frequent. We have had some great successes with this formula but we have also taken some losses which has made the NHM more cautious and less likely to accept this type of contract. The biggest failures we have had in our ten year history tend to happen when a venue is in a holiday resort.

You would think that with a large influx of tourists, an exhibition would do well. However, in our experience people don't go to exhibitions when they are on holiday. We now advise our clients that when they are doing their visitor projections, they should focus on their home market.

Collaborative projects are another way of working altogether. As yet we have not really participated in these but models exist from our colleagues in Europe whereby institutions from 3 countries gain EU funding either to develop jointly one exhibit which tours to all three or for each to develop one exhibit which is then exchanged between the partners in the consortium.

This is very time consuming and needs long term planning. It takes a long time and many meetings to get EU funding. ECSITE is a good source of contacts for collaboration and potential partners and provides good networking opportunities.

Partnerships over the years

British Council - As the cultural arm of the UK's overseas presence, the British Council is interested in our activities. They can't actually fund our big exhibitions directly but they do provide travel grants for our scientists to give lectures at exhibition openings. They very kindly provided the funds for me to speak at the iSCAN Spring meeting for which we are very grateful.

Department of Trade and Industry - their trade missions are useful for us particularly in potentially risky countries like Russia and Saudi. It works well for them to have an eye-catching T-Rex on their trade stand at a trade fair and it can produce interesting commercial contacts for us.

Department of Culture, Media and Sport - The DCMS does not fund our touring exhibitions programme because we are completely self-financing. They are however increasingly interested in our international operations and the reach that the NHM has beyond South Kensington.

ECSITE has been a very valuable source of inspiration and information for us. The ECSITE organisation is a dynamic association of European Science Centres whose annual conference is full of networking opportunities, very informative presentations and ideas for collaboration. The next conference is in Naples in November - it would be great to see some iSCAN members there.

We have been greatly helped by all these partners over the last 10 years. We could not have built up the experience we have without their support.

Lizzy Cox, Touring Exhibitions, The Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD

Tel 00 44 207 942 5789, Fax 00 44 207 942 5686

The Pfizer Science Bus

On 27 March 2000 The Irish Centre for Talented Youth (CTYI) at Dublin City University launched a new craft which aims to go where no one has gone before, exploring chemistry, physics and biology with young people countrywide. Developed at a cost of half a million pounds (IR), the full-size coach, sporting the motto "A Journey of Discovery " has been fitted out as a working science laboratory designed to excite and capture the imagination of 9-12 year old students.

The Science Bus is sponsored by Pfizer Inc, the global pharmaceutical company, and has been generously funded by the DCU Education Trust and The Pfizer Foundation, an independent charitable foundation established by Pfizer Inc. Pfizer has had a manufacturing facility in Ringaskiddy, Co. Cork for more than 25 years where over 450 people are employed in the production of a range of medicines for human and veterinary use around the world.

The Science Bus project was developed by the Centre for Talented Youth at Dublin City University. The Centre has helped almost 7.000 students with exceptional academic ability to learn about subjects as diverse as biotechnology, archaeology and electronics. The Pfizer Science Bus will travel to Primary Schools all over Ireland for day visits. Tailored to complement the new primary science curriculum, the bus will be staffed by experienced instructors who will help students discover the excitement and relevance of science in everyday life. Students will see that science is fun, which may encourage many of them to study science subjects at second and third level. Material for follow-up class work will be available to the schools.

The Pfizer Science Bus is going on the road at a time when educators and policy makers are calling for change in science education. The Irish Council for Science, Technology and Innovation (ICSTI), announced recently that employers are finding it increasingly difficult to fill vacancies for jobs in high tech sectors, despite excellent pay scales. Meanwhile, teachers are being instructed to increase science programmes, but often lack the laboratory facilities to do so. Dr. Sheila Gilheany, Director of the Irish Centre for Talented Youth (CTYI), said Pfizer had a long-standing interest in developing young talent in Ireland, having supported courses such as pharmacology for CTYI students. "This partnership between Pfizer and CTYI to put a Science Bus on the road is opportune given the introduction of science to the primary school curriculum, " Dr. Gilheany said. "The most frequently heard remark from children who have been on the Science Bus is 'I want to be a scientist when I grow up'. Let's hope we can build on that enthusiasm," added Dr Gilheany.

As qualified young scientists themselves, the crew of the Pfizer Science Bus - Ms. Ita Murphy and Dr. Michele O'Rourke - are aware that girls in particular do not always see science as a path to a career. Ita and Michele are keen to pass on their expertise to children interested in asking questions about the world they live in.

Ms Murphy is from Skibbereen in Co Cork and has a BSc in Chemistry from UCC and a Masters Degree in Science Communication. She has worked in science centres in Australia and has presented "ScienceWorks" Roadshows in Ireland.

Dr. O'Rourke is originally from Tralee, Co Kerry and holds a degree in Biotechnology from NUI Galway and a PhD in Molecular Microbiology from the University of Sheffield, She was involved with a major EU-funded research programme before joining the project.

The Pfizer Science Bus Irish Centre for Talented Youth Dublin City University Dublin 9, Ireland Tel: +353 1 704 5090 Fax: +353 1 704 5693 Email: sciencebus at dcu.ie

How can we attract students to science? Danny O'Hare says the State can promote change in the culture of education

The continuing fall-off of interest in science and engineering subjects at second level is alarming, especially since interest was never all that high in the first place. The problem is an interesting example of the clash between national needs and individual preferences. From a national viewpoint, the need is stark: we simply cannot build the kind of economic future we now envisage, and presumably desire, without a strong backbone of people trained in the sciences and engineering.

Nonetheless, however pressing that national priority may be, the unfortunate reality is that not enough individual students and their parents think that way. From the individual perspective, these subjects are not attractive enough when compared to the available alternatives. Individuals are quite happy that there should be more scientists; they just don't want to do it themselves.

In one sense, the drift away from these subjects is a rational response to the structure of our existing points system. Subjects that are perceived as "hard to do well in" will tend to be chosen less often than subjects that are seen as delivering points with less effort.

However, while this is an issue, it is not the whole story and possibly not even a really important part of it. In my view, the malaise is more fundamental: it reflects our traditional lack of a scientific culture. Compared with the arts, science lacks a central place in Ireland's view of itself.

Changing that is not an overnight task. Some of the things that need to be done involve making further changes in a second-level curriculum that is already showing stress from having had to cope with successive waves of change over the past decade, and having had to do so with overstretched resources.

But yes, we do need to change what is taught in science and engineering. We need to shift away from a crafts-based view of engineering to a more modern one, particularly involving electronics. We need to make the curriculum more relevant to the scientific world of today, rather than relating so heavily to the past. And in the way we teach these subjects, we need a much greater emphasis on practical, laboratory-based work.

Realistically, it is all the harder to make these things happen when demand to do science and engineering subjects is relatively weak, and getting weaker. Ideally, what we need is change within the schools that is driven by student and parent demand. How can we bring that about?

A national science centre In fact, there is one major project that could have a dramatic effect in turning the tide of public awareness, in a relatively short period of time. This is the creation of a national science centre which would act as a living showplace for the world of science.

In a country where almost every boreen seems to have a museum of some kind, it is surely revealing that we have no equivalent for science. But what I have in mind is not a museum in any traditional sense of that term.

A science centre, on the model that is now well proven in many places around the world, is a place where one can see science happen- and even more important, experience science by doing it. Interactivity is the key word in successful science centres.

A world-class centre of this kind could put science on the map for the Irish public. Done well, a science centre provides a spectacular public attraction. It could be the essential foundation-stone of a national campaign to make science and engineering more attractive as school subjects and as career choices.

It could, in a phrase, glamorise science in a way it never has been in Ireland before. And if glamorising science sounds a rather undignified activity for the State, we should remember that our problem in recruiting students is precisely related to the subject's lack of glamour.

The benefits don't stop at the public relations level. A science centre is more than an excursion for families on Sunday afternoons. Much of the time, science centres act as a supplement to teaching in schools - providing facilities that no school could ever offer, and structured experiences that can be directly tied into the curriculum. As a way of bridging the gap from where we are now at the school level and where we need to be, a national science centre could be an invaluable aid.

Science centres don't come cheap. They are expensive to build, and expensive to run, because unless all the exhibits work all the time, the overall message is dangerously undermined. This may be the reason why previous attempts to promote the idea did not find favour with government.

The situation now has changed, however. Money is somewhat looser, for a start. But more important, the falling-off in student numbers in science has now made urgent the need to foster a scientific culture. A science centre will not be a magic wand, but it could well be the factor that turns the tide.

This article appeared in the Education & Living Supplement to The Irish Times of 23 May 2000.

RECENT NEWS

Visit the new iSCAN website http://www.iscan.ie and let us know what additional features it should have.

We welcome as new iSCAN members:

Hüttinger Exhibition Engineering of Schwaig bei Nürnberg, Germany which was founded in 1921 and has been involved in exhibition engineering since 1948. It has worldwide experience of more than 100 exhibition projects and has a permanent staff of more than 100.

The Ininshowen Maritime Museum at Greencastle, Co. Donegal has recently constructed a state-of-the-art planetarium.

The Ulster Museum is now part of the National Museums and Gardens of Northern Ireland and the science centre being built as part of the ODYSSEY project at the Abercorn Basin on Belfast Harbour is now called W5 - whowhatwherewhenwhy. For further information see the website http://w5online.co.uk or contact Dr Sally Montgomery, Tel: +44 (0) 289022 4422.

CONGRATULATIONS to five Irish students who have won an international competition organized by NASA's Ames Research Centre in California. The participants were asked to design living quarters in space to accommodate 10,000 people. There were 151 submissions from 569 students and 31 teachers. The top award was won by the Irish entry called DaedalusaL4. The Irish team included three students from Blackrock College Dublin: Mark Cummins, Stuart Redmond and Cian Wilson; and two students from St Joseph of Cluny School, Killiney, Lorraine Murphy and Alison Squire. Their teachers are John Daly od Blackrock and Joanna Dullaghan of St Joseph of Cluny.

Headline in The Irish Times, 20 June 2000: 'Skill shortage could hamper Intel's $2billion expansion plan'.

Einstein on teaching physics: 'In the matter of physics the first lessons should contain nothing but what is experimental and interesting to see. A pretty experiment is in itself often more valuable than twenty formulae extracted from our minds'. - Albert Einstein, quoted in 'Conversations with Einstein' p67 by A. Moszkowski, Horizon Press (1970).

RDS Youth Science and Arts Week

Takes place from July 3-8. A week-long summer course designed to introduce students aged 14-17 to a variety of topics in science and the arts. Registration is open to all. The cost of £80 includes all activities and workshop materials. Students come from all over Ireland and as far away as Finland to enjoy this event, where the emphasis is on fun and participation.

[ vol.1 ] [ vol.2 ] [ vol.3 ] [ vol.4 ] [ vol.5 ] [ vol.6 ] [ vol.7 ] [ vol.8 ] [ vol.9 ]
[ vol.10 ] [ vol.11 ] [ vol.12 ] [ vol.13 ]