Friday 29th september

In the last century, when we talked about the future, we imagined flying cars, a world full of technology... Today, we imagine the future with many possible tracks, one track with technology very present of course, another with a return to the essential, and maybe a future where humans would no longer be present... All these tracks are hypotheses brought by researchers who build the future and then talk about the NEDC.

As every year, the public will be able to meet researchers from all disciplines and all horizons (ecology, literature, physics, heritage, health...) in unusual places (warehouses, museums, castles, parks...) in scenographies with unique atmospheres, discuss in the dark or in limited time... The public will be confronted with the hard choices of the researchers' daily life, and the evening will be an opportunity to think together, to contribute, to discuss, and to learn!

the Great Participatory Experiment is back

Among the proposed activities, the Great Participatory Experiment is back! We are working with researchers from Toulouse (south of France) to establish together a protocol to perform more than 1000 measurements of water quality around the 16 participating cities. These measurements will enrich a project that works on water quality on a European scale!

The goals of the European Researchers Night are

Attract a public that is not familiar with science by means of our offer of an exciting event
Ensure that the public spends a long time at the event (more than two and a half hours) to truly interact with the researchers
sharing “science in the making”: what are the questions, the procedures, the alliances, the successes and the difficulties ?
Involve members of the public and awaken the desire to develop and maintain a connection with research before and after the event

Each city bring his personal touch

Our evening events are all prepared using the same approach, will all rely and will adopt the same common interactions, like Speed-searching, The Game of Hypothesis, Meetings in the Dark...So 80% of the programmed interactions will be common but 20% is the personal touch of the manager structure mainly based on the stage Designs (Scenography).

Common interactions

Stage Designs (Scenography)

Playful, aesthetic and interactive presentations and special atmospheres are created in order to facilitate the encounter between the public and the researchers. The idea is to provide immersion into the researchers' world and highlight its attractiveness. The scenography is adapted to our particularly evocative themes.

Speed-searching

This is a variation on speed-dating where members of the general public meet researchers instead of bachelors. Every 8 minutes, the public switches to another researcher. Researchers come with an illustrative object to help get the discussion going.

Podcasts: “You will never guess what happened to me”

With many years of experience in the storytelling of researcher, we produce media content (audio, video, or text) to be widely broadcasted on internet and on the radio. In 2022, the researchers will tell a story of something unexpected that happened to them (A face to face with a bear, an annotation in an historical source that changes everything, an incident that produced great results through serendipity…).

HyPoker! A game of hypothesis (2022-2023)

Using large, printed cards (tarot size), a researcher exposes a situation where they had to make a choice, and present different option they had at this moment. They do not tell which choice they made, but let the public debate, ask the researcher questions about the different options, their pros and cons, and finally vote and explain their choice. The researcher tells what happened for real, but also discuss the other options, continuing more freely the exchanges with the public, based on the previous debate they had.