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Science Gallery | INTERVIEW
(...Continued from page 16) trying to take science out of the science box. It’s not about dumbing it down, but about creating a more human face to science by facilitating face-to-face interactions between the public and people working at the cutting edge,” he says.
“We want to be a living focus for a new generation of ‘Leonardos’ — agile, creative, curious minds who can move effortlessly between science and the arts, between technology and business. We want to be a melting pot, bringing together people from different backgrounds and perspectives to explore major issues which affect us all and to push the boundaries. We want to be a place where the innovators of the future can be discovered,” Gorman adds.
Being plugged into Trinity and the different research groups within the college is a tremendous opportunity to facilitate such interaction, according to Gorman. “Sometimes conversations are structured through workshops, where Trinity researchers and our sponsor companies play a mentoring role. On other occasions, it is more informal. We also have a wonderful resource in the science and engineering students who help out in the gallery, meeting the public and chatting with them about the science behind the exhibits. A living person is better than any amount of didactic signage.”
This partnership, coupling Gorman’s enthusiasm with support from the Science Gallery Development Board and key industry players, has resulted in a very successful infancy for the Science Gallery. “We have had over 70,000 visitors to Science Gallery in the six months since opening, exceeding our target for our first year, and have 3,500 members (membership is currently free via www.sciencegallery.com). We are delighted with the response so far but also feel that we are only warming up.”
It should come as no surprise that Gorman and the Board have big plans for the Science Gallery _ not just for the operation on Pearse Street, but for the concept as a whole. For the Science Gallery, its long-term ambition is to become that influential global model of interaction between the university and the city talked of by Gorman.` “Dublin is a wonderfully supportive environment for the launch of
such a project, and Trinity College has launched a bold and courageous initiative at a time when very new approaches are required to engage young people with science and technology,” Gorman adds. “The way they are learning about them in school is completely disconnected to their lives.
“Too much in our educational system is compartmentalised into different areas of expertise. Even innovation tends to be compartmentalised into the idea that it is only engineers or scientists who can innovate. I think the exciting thing is to think about how you can mobilise a multi-disciplinary team around an idea very quickly, take it to the next stage and then make a rapid decision about whether to continue development or to kill it off and redeploy resources elsewhere. Some of the corporate players such as Google are very good at this,” he explains.
“Science is the most powerful force shaping the culture of the 21st century, yet for some reason it tends to get left out of most people’s definition of ‘culture’. Why is that? When did you last see science in a ‘cultural centre’? This is an anomaly, but I think science helps perpetuate the ‘two cultures’ divide sometimes by talking about science as if it were a timeless mass of certainties rather than the work of ingenious and imaginative human beings,” says Gorman. “I hope that the Science Gallery will help redress the balance and show that science is critically connected to all areas of human culture,” he adds, with no little ambition. “Everyone wins from that dialogue.”
"We’re trying to take science out of the science box. It’s not about dumbing it down, but about creating a more human face to science by facilitating face-to-face interactions between the public and people working at the cutting edge."
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