Coming of age for festival that is copied the world over

Published on Friday 6 March 2009 19:51

THE Edinburgh International Science Festival comes of age this year with a programme full of the fun and excitement thousands of children and their parents have come to expect.

Back in 1989, the festival sparked an idea that has now circled the globe, with cities across the world copying Edinburgh's ways of celebrating science. From Poland to South Korea, the programmes have been studied and adapted, taking Edinburgh's style of workshops to millions.

At the centre stands Dr Simon Gage, who joined the festival for its second outing in 1990 as "a tea boy" and became its director 12 years ago.

Looking at his background, you could believe Dr Gage was born to be in the public eye: his mother was a dancer who shared the big screen with Cliff Richard in The Young Ones, while his father toured with the Old Vic theatre before becoming a television director.

"I grew up in an environment that was very unlike that of a scientist," says Dr Gage. "So when the opportunity came to mix science and performance I just leapt at the chance."

Some of the past science festival guests have been recipients of the Edinburgh Medal, awarded by the City Council to scientists who have "a significant contribution to the understanding and well-being of humanity". Of the 19 honoured, three have gone on to win Nobel prizes.

Dr Gage says: "There are some people in the world who have just completely got 'it'. Some of them are really obvious; people like Sir David Attenborough, who received the Edinburgh Medal in 1998. He's a consummate communicator; it's a pleasure to watch him in action.

"Professor Stephen J Gould, who received the Edinburgh Medal in 1990, was pretty amazing. There are also people like Professor James Lovelock and cosmologist Lee Smolin.

"When you get people like that with big ideas, who are steeped in science and who can really communicate, then you can have a really memorable experience."

It isn't just the scientists who have impressed Dr Gage over the years – guests from outside science have also lit up the festival. Indian economist Amartya Sen, who went on to win the Nobel prize, was a highlight, as was Robert McNamara, former defence secretary to US president John F Kennedy, who spoke about the Cuban missile crisis.

Some of the Edinburgh International Science Festival's giant interactive experiments have also stuck in Dr Gage's memory.

"Because we're temporary, we didn't want to buy things, so we devised this new way of communicating.

"We developed a lot of workshops and immersive experiences, like climbing up a giant nose into a set of lungs; or going inside a 450 million times larger model of a cell, which no-one had really done before, and used these as ways of communicating the basic ideas to the families and children."

Dr Gage is clearly proud that the immersive experiences developed by the science festival are now being used around the world to enthuse further generations.

"The things we've exported are not only events but the whole notion of celebrating science as a festival," he says. "It's quite interesting to see how our ideas have been adapted to suit their new environment. For example, at Grahamstown, in South Africa, the issue is very much about the white community being economically active and the black community not, and you can use the festival to bridge some of these gaps."

Genoa, in Italy, and Daejeon, the "science city" in South Korea, have also used Edinburgh as a template, while science festivals became a "social movement" in Poland.

"Poland was one of the first countries to copy us," Dr Gage says. "At that time, Polish universities were badly under-funded and they couldn't get the government to change this so the academics decided to hold science festivals in the universities so that the public would come in and understand what terribly run-down places they were.

"So science festivals became like a campaigning social movement and persuaded the government to fund the universities and now they have about two dozen science festivals."

But what of the future? Dr Gage is very pleased with the partnerships the festival has developed in the Scottish capital – including with the Royal Botanic Garden, the zoo, the museums and the universities – and now envisages the programme promoted beyond Edinburgh to a wider UK audience.

"I think the great thing with science and technology is that it goes at a pace – there's always bucketloads of material to talk about. So every year we leave out more than we put in."

&#149 The Scotsman is the media partner of the Edinburgh International Science Festival, which runs 4-18 April. For details and tickets, call 0131 553 0322 or visit www.sciencefestival.co.uk