The Science in the City festival will be returning to the streets of Valletta at the end of September with activities spread over two days.

Project coordinator Edward Duca announced the festival in a press conference on Tuesday, saying that it will take place between September 29 and 30 around the Triton Fountain in Valletta. Satellite events and performances will also be held at the Catholic Institute in Floriana as well as at Sala San Duminku and Spazju Kreattiv in Valletta.

The annual event will take scientists out of their laboratories and onto the streets where they can share fun experiments and demonstrations with the public as well as inform people of some of the ongoing research happening in Malta, he said. 

“The aim of the festival has always been to bring scientists, researchers and artists together with the community to bring about the change we desperately need in our world today,” he said.

“We are faced with huge, complicated challenges like climate change, pollution, inequality and migration, which are responsibilities that we all must act on, research is the tool that guides us on how to act.”

University Rector Alfred Vella said that Science in the City holds a special place in the country’s cultural calendar as it serves as a platform to demystify science for the public and assuage fears and doubts they may have in the scientific community and the work that it does.

It is unfortunate, he continued, that some people still view scientific endeavours with an air of negativity and banality. There were also those who continue to pit science against other pursuits such as the arts.

The festival, he continued, should inspire people to tackle the challenges and difficulties that the planet is facing and encourage people to question ignorance of science.

Ignorance of science leads to fear- University rector

A case in point, he said, was the reaction of some to the release of treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant in Japan.

“If those protesting people understood just a little bit more about the processes that lead to it, I am sure the reaction would not have been so outsized,” he said.

The case is also true for those who chose to scaremonger vaccines in the wake of COVID-19, Vella continued.

“Ignorance of science leads to fear, like the fear that some had when science gave us the solution to COVID-19. Unfortunately, even some people from this university chose to speak out and spread this fear,” he said.

“The reason I have never put a stop to such messages is because I believe that the University should never censor and should serve as a bastion of freedom of expression, even when that expression is stupid and dangerous.” 

Vella said that his dream for Science in the City is that it can one day have the resources to travel all over the Maltese islands to spread science activities in the piazzas of towns and villages.

One of the highlights of this year’s festival is MythoXjenza, a performance that will bring the science behind seismology through a retelling of the Greek myth of the Minotaur.

Developed by seismologist Matthew Agius and artist Jeremy Grech, the idea of MythoXjenza came about in January when the public was captivated by a series of earthquakes that shook Malta and Gozo. 

The performance will feature a nine-year-old protagonist who sets out to ‘defy the gods’ and dispel the myth of the Minotaur in the labyrinth through science.

The MEDWET project, a cross-country initiative to bring irrigation solutions to farming in arid climates will also be exhibiting at the festival.