Team:UCopenhagen/Public Engagement
Public Engagement
In our effort to engage more people in synthetic biology we have attend and organized some different events.
Culture Night at Tycho Brahe Planetarium in Copenhagen
Together with the DTU team we have been participating in the "Culture Night" in Copenhagen at an event held by the Tycho Brahe Planetarium.
The Culture Night in Copenhagen is an annual event taking place on the night when the schools begin their autumn break. On the Culture Night all the museums, governmental buildings, institutions, stores and much more is open for the public until midnight offering different events, talks, concerts etc. You can read more about the culture night here
The Tycho Brahe Planetarium is Denmark's most advanced center for popularizing astronomy and space research and promoting knowledge on natural science. On the culture night, the planetarium is open until midnight and has 4000-6000 visitors in total. You can read more about the Tycho Brahe Planetarium here
In collaboration with the DTU team we had a stand at the Tycho Brahe Planetarium on Culture Night. The aim was to have a two-way dialogue with children, youngsters and grown ups about the challenges of colonizing Mars and how synthetic biology could help this development. We had a lot of different activities, for instance children could play with clay and build a house or an alien on Mars' surface or try to plate petri dishes with bacteria to get an idea of how you work in a lab. In addition we had inoculated some petri dishes with bacteria from every day objects such as the seat of a toilet and the front screen of a phone to start discussion on bacteria and biosafety with perspective to space exploration.