An enduring partnership between ANU, Questacon and Shell celebrates 21 years of bringing science to the people
“In the beginning people said, ‘How can you be a national science centre if you don’t go anywhere?’”
ANU physicist Professor Mike Gore faced this question soon after the Federal Government announced plans to turn his initiative – Questacon – into the National Science and Technology Centre in 1984.
He’d founded Questacon in a Canberra public school four years earlier, inspired by a visit to the Exploratorium in San Francisco. As the weekend science shows at the fledgling centre became more and more popular, Gore was already planning a way to take the show on the road. In 1985, he trained a team of 10 undergraduate science students from ANU to present a series of popular science shows in the nearby New South Wales town of Goulburn. More than 1,500 people attended the initial presentations, which went on continuously over two days. The concept of a travelling science show had proved an outstanding success, and the science circus was born.
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The Questacon Shell Science Circus team arrives at another destination.
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“We went national way before any of the other national institutions really got on the road,” Gore says. “It was a great experiment. We didn’t know how it was going to run.”
The early success spurred the science circus team to think bigger. The following year, Gore received sponsorship from Shell to run the science show equivalent of the Le Mans car rally, where, he says, “they drive for 24 hours and see what falls off”. The team went on the road for a month, hitting towns from Mount Gambia in South Australia to Townsville in Queensland. All over the country, enthusiastic audiences turned out to learn more about the world and how it works. Shell decided to continue its support, planting the seed for what would become one of the longest continuing sponsorship arrangements in Australia.
Twenty-one years later, the Shell Questacon Science Circus continues to travel all over the nation, exposing 100,000 Australians each year to science in an exciting way. The partnership between ANU, Questacon and Shell is staffed by postgraduate students undertaking a Graduate Diploma in Science Communication at the ANU Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS).
“The graduates have carried our practical, hands-on philosophy to many countries in the Asia-Pacific region and further a field,” CPAS Director Associate Professor Sue Stocklmayer says. “The creation of CPAS is also a direct result of the success of the science circus. But most importantly the University has benefited from the three-way partnership, which has enabled us to reach over a million regional and remote Australian students and their families.”
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"As a national centre it goes out to the people, many of whom will never come to the capital, and will never see the building on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. It’s like the mountain and Mohammed. We take science to the people.”
Professor Mike Gore
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The program partners are also effusive in praise for the science circus. Questacon Director Professor Graham Durant credits the program for helping the National Science and Technology Centre to make its range of outreach programs among the best in the world. Shell spokeswoman Jenny Odgers says the science circus has been a “benefit to regional, rural and remote communities, to the more than 250 students who have graduated from the program, and to the teachers.”
As the juggernaut of the Shell Questacon Science Circus continues to spread enthusiasm for science nationally and internationally, the man who started it says the success of the venture boils down to a simple love of sharing knowledge.
“Science inspires me most, and purveying science to the public – whether it is in Canberra, in the Kimberley, or down in Tasmania – is very exciting,” Gore says.
“Questacon has many programs that travel around the country. As a national centre it goes out to the people, many of whom will never come to the capital, and will never see the building on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. It’s like the mountain and Mohammed. We take science to the people.”
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ANU Reporter
Winter 2006
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