Are you interested in organising interactive science workshops? This month we talked to Bob Mason, a PhD student in the Spoel Lab, to find out what he learnt from organising a sold-out workshop at the Edinburgh Science Festival. What was your workshop about? And how long did it take to organise? Earlier this year (April 2025) I led a workshop for the Edinburgh Science Festival (ESF) at the National Museum of Scotland to teach children about how plants adapt to their environment. The workshop involved building their own plants and talking about what adaptations are. The designing and planning from original idea to completion, took me and others about 10 months. Bob talking to workshop participants about how plants adapt to fire. Your hard work obviously paid off- the workshop was very successful! What are the key things you learnt about designing and delivering an effective science outreach workshop? I learnt a lot! But I would say there are 4 key lessons: Know your audience A key early step in planning is to know who your audience is. Is it school children of a certain age? Adults in the pub? Families dropping by a museum? For ESF 2025 our workshop was aimed at 8–11year-olds, so we had to ensure that our workshop was suitable for this age bracket. For example, plant science beyond photosynthesis is mostly absent from school curricula, so we needed to make sure that we briefly introduced the parts of a plant and their function at the start of the workshop to get everyone on the same page. Despite efforts to clearly label your workshop as for a certain age group, you will almost always have curious people attending above and below the age bracket, so make sure you plan ways to scale up and down the complexity of the content. With older participants we briefly introduced succession and evolution while with younger participants we talked about seed dormancy and germination. A good way of tailoring detail is to link your content to something participants are familiar with. In our case I showed pictures of fires and floods that happened in Edinburgh. You’re not in school When doing outreach, sometimes you might physically be in a school, but making your workshop distinct from a school lesson is one of the most important things I learned. I have given a lot of talks in my time as a PhD student. My default setting is to make a clean and professional set of slides - but is that really engaging? Our workshop was designed to be hands on; the participants were building 3D printed plants and talking with experts about how they may survive in certain environments and situations. While we did use a powerpoint to introduce ourselves and some basic plant biology, we made sure the people could get stuck in to building and talking. They were learning without really realising because they were (hopefully) having fun and were free to ask us questions throughout. The way you convey your presence is also key to setting the tone. In this workshop I was taking the role of a pseudo gameshow host as we spun the wheel of stress to select random disasters to threaten everyone’s plants with. It does take a couple of run-throughs to perfect, but by our final session I was getting laughs out of the crowd, which really helps create the relaxed atmosphere we were aiming for. Taking a closer look at some real plants. Get everyone involved While the workshop is designed for a specific audience, you should always be aware of everyone in attendance. For ESF, all children had to be supervised by a parent/guardian. Our primary target was the children, so we gave them the activities to do. Because the activities were interactive, adults could also get stuck in. We also set up a microscope stall that we encouraged everyone to have a look at. Adults will often come to you with interesting concerns about science. They might work in science, or they might have not touched biology since they were 16, but I can guarantee they will learn more from talking to you than they would in any other setting. Not including them would be a missed opportunity for successful engagement. They are often more hesitant to get involved and might need a nudge to say “have a look yourself”, but when they do, they often have as much fun and learn as much as the children. Who doesn’t enjoy playing with Lego? Accessibility is also an important consideration given that the aim of public engagement is to break down barriers in science. We had visual prompts printed in large font and colourblind friendly formats and the volunteers were ready to help with construction tasks if anyone was having trouble. I also made sure to recruit a diverse team of volunteers with the aim of providing role models for attendees from any background with any scientific interest. Plan, plan, plan Finally, I learned there is absolutely no room for winging it in a successful workshop, it is a lot of work to plan, but it is worth it. Credit must go to UoE public engagement officer Maria Fanourgiaki who mentored me throughout this process and made sure everything ran as smoothly as possible. Backups are essential! Spare props are essential to replace broken or lost parts. I also recruited more volunteers than I needed, so that if anyone dropped out on short notice there was someone available to avoid disrupting the activity. Something I would thoroughly recommend is also planning in flexible timing. We had 60-minute slots for the workshop, but only 10-15 minutes between each slot to reset the room. When working with children, you never know what might happen, and also may never know which parts really captivate them. We designed the workshop to only last 45 minutes, giving us time to wait for latecomers (which is a certainty) and space for us to run overtime with interesting discussions. This is really helpful! Thank you for sharing it with us. Any last advice Bob? My parting message is that this is entirely a team effort. Throughout the whole process I had input and guidance from both my mentors and my volunteers, so don’t be afraid to ask people for help and opinions. The best way to get better at public engagement and to develop your workshop content is through practice. As long as people have had fun, you’re doing something right! This article was published on 2025-09-04
