Science in the City is returning on Friday with an action-packed hybrid format, featuring online events and a ‘real-world’ programme celebrating the arts and sciences in Valletta. The festival has become a much sought-after national event.

A survey in 2019 commissioned by Esplora/MCST revealed that nearly every three in four people in Malta knew about the festival and nearly half the population had attended. 

Last year, the event was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It was again a success, with the organising team, led by Edward Duca, learning a few valuable lessons in the process.

“We learnt that people want online events! We had 20,000 unique views on Facebook and Zoom on our videos,” Duca says proudly. 

“Our audience evaluation showed that going online attracted a more diverse audience. These results gave me and the team the confidence to try a hybrid festival.”

Theme

The theme of this year’s festival is ‘Sowing Seeds’, a concept that teaches that if we give something, we can receive something in return. Duca gives the concept a wider meaning.

“We want to sow the seeds within people for them to use research to make their lives better. As a science and arts festival, creativity and critical thinking are key to enabling citizens to actively shape their future,” he says.

“In the age we are living in, knowledge and research have become so important for us to have a better life. We are trying to do this in many ways. We encourage researchers of all genders and identities to talk about their work, to become role models, to work with artists to engage others in as entertaining and creative a way as possible. There is research that shows that encouraging an interest in the arts can also lead to encouraging interest in science. We want to do both.”

Programme

From experience, Duca knows what people, young and old, want to see at the festival and what activities they want to take part in.

“People love sharks, puppet shows, anything related with health, music and theatre. Oh, and robots, people love robots,” he enthuses.

Controversial topics seem to draw the adult crowds but the team found that these themes tend to do better online than in the real world. 

Thought-provoking artworks, music and theatre also do very well, usually when they “fuse two ideas that people don’t expect”, Duca remarks.

One of the headline acts this year will be John Hinton, a comedic singer-songwriter who has created some unique songs about Malta, science and the festival. He is performing at City Theatre, in Valletta, and online as well.

Another highlight will be a whole new show focusing on researchers, named Game of Talents, where people need to guess the research field of a panel of experts from the clues given. There will also be a series of child-focused events Ammoknights, Ċlikki, Cliff and Kids Dig Science that combine science with performance theatre (with a dash of puppets) but have all been conceived to nurture pride in the natural and cultural heritage through science and research.

Duca especially encourages people to visit the exhibition at St Magdalene church titled The Time Travellers’ Dilemma by Solid Eye, which is supported by University of Malta researchers and other experts. This exhibition fuses sci-fi with artificial intelligence (AI), memories and the human understanding of language.

The festival coordinator is certain that the real-world festival events will be more popular than the online ones, “because there is a hunger for people to see live events and shows”.

All shows and performances will strictly adhere to the health authorities’ healthy and safety protocols to curb the spread of the pandemic.

“We are doing this as safely as possible with no stands in Valletta’s streets, asking people to book beforehand and bring their COVID-19 vaccine certificate, as well as other minor measures to help people maintain a safe social distance. I think the combination of safety with having things happening in the real world is a combination many are looking for and it’s taken us a huge amount of work to manage to make this work.”

The way forward

Duca points out that the hybrid format was not shorn of challenges and the Science in the City team quickly realised that it required double the time investment. 

They also learnt that funders and other supporters of cultural events need to provide larger budgets for activities to go hybrid effectively. 

“You can’t just point a camera at a show and say it’s hybrid. You need a dedicated team thinking about what people in the real world and what people online will experience and tailor unique experiences for both of them,” he says.

Duca believes that the festival has helped greatly in bringing science to the people in the past years, yet, he says that despite its popularity, the festival on its own will never achieve all its aims to encourage more STEAM (science, tech, engineering, arts, maths) careers, more people analysing the facts and being able to sift misinformation from the knowledge that would help their lives or more people actively contributing and changing their community. 

“We want knowledge and research to be the drivers for change in our society. We want the researchers and volunteers who dedicate their time to show what’s happening locally to become the role models of children today. For this to happen, every part of society, from industry to various government sectors, need to develop the right policies and budgetary measures to nurture more science uptake.”

He also calls on policymakers to use evidence and research when drawing up new policies and urges them to invest in more research to build up the capacity for Malta to solve its own problems.

Science in the City is being held tomorrow and Saturday, with the real-world programme taking place at a number of venues in Valletta. People have to book two-hour slots. For more information, visit https://scienceinthecity.org.mt or book the events on https://bit.ly/SITCFESTBOOK2021.

Acknowledgements

Science in the City is part of the European Researchers’ Night, an EU-wide celebration. It is co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.

The Science in the City consortium is led by the University of Malta and the Malta Chamber of Scientists, in partnership with the Minister for Equality, Research and Innovation, Trust Stamp Ltd, Malta Enterprise, MCAST, Qualia Analytics, Esplora, BPC International, SEM, PBS, Spazju Kreattiv, Tech.mt, AquaBioTech Group, Valletta Design Cluster, Valletta Cultural Agency, The Environment Resource Agency, WasteServ, More or Less Theatre and Keen Ltd.