Looking past the main event

They are fairly similar across science festivals, though they come under a variety of names: Expo Day, Science Carnival, Science Street Fair, and Discovery Days to name a few. For our purposes let’s just call them the “Main Event.” These are the big number days, when tens of thousands of people swarm a wide array of interactive booths set up by many different exhibitors, often with stage performances and wonderful spectacles. But as big as the Main Events might be, it is crucial that we don’t lose the bigger picture: there can be so much more to a science festival. Festivals enjoy a unique flexibility to create new, innovative, sometimes entirely off-the-wall programs that are custom tailored for any kind of target audiences…including those that are traditionally hard-to-reach (underserved communities, single adults, or even the science phobic). Some science festivals make this kind of programming a priority, and I think they are better off for it. In fact, preliminary results from Science Festival Alliance evaluations last year hints that the custom-made smaller events in a festival’s schedule have more of a direct positive impact on attendees than the Main Events. There is a tremendous pressure on festivals to deliver a critical mass of crowds on the Main Event days, and to ensure a quality experience for these masses. Festivals in San Diego and San Francisco use the power of a major league stadium to create this magic. This year, the Cambridge Science Festival has added real circus acts. The pressure can be enough that some science festivals place the vast majority of resources and energy into these Main Events. The results can be truly fantastic, and over the past couple years I’ve seen a lot of unbelievably great Main Events. But I’ve also been to science festival events in forgotten urban cores, in trendy hipster neighborhoods, in shining new civic spaces, and in working class dives….sometimes all within one festival’s one-week schedule. There is something so special about the way these other festival programs reach out to people where they live, work, and play. So next time you think about participating in a science festival, make sure you take a moment to look past the main event.