Beyond Planet Earth

Edinburgh International Science Festival is an educational charity with a 27 year history of success in promoting science engagement across a wide range of events, activities and education programmes. Our mission, central purpose and objectives are all aligned to promoting engagement with science and technology, through innovative events and projects for a wide range of audiences. In 2015 over 105,000 people attended our ticketed events and a further 190,000 people engaged with our free exhibitions and hands-on activities staged across Edinburgh.

We are particularly well-known and respected for creating immersive, high-value learning opportunities for young people, and in recent years have been very successful in applying this expertise to our programme of events for adults. We see the Festival as a 'living laboratory': an experiment space that has the potential to bring people (audiences, scientists and experts from relevant fields) together in novel ways to explore science and its impact on society.

In the Scottish Year of Innovation, Architecture and Design, the 2016 Festival, held March 26th - April 10th, asks how can we Build Better Worlds? Exploring science, technology, engineering and design's ability to help improve our world and how we live in it, we will tackle themes that showcase the current status of research across a range of disciplines and areas of scientific enquiry, and articulate some of the most interesting and perplexing questions that surround the science.

Under this umbrella, Beyond Planet Earth will be an exploration of non-Earthbound challenges and opportunities. From early childhood we all grow a fascination with the stars in the sky and ponder what lies beyond. This strand of linked events will explore the opportunities and challenges we face as we attempt to build better worlds beyond the little blue planet we currently call home. The long-standing popularity of space as a theme in literature and the recent successes of films like Gravity (2013) and The Martian (2015) and the recent BBC series Stargazing Live show a public appetite for investigation of this fascinating field. This project will deliver an opportunity for Festival attendees to delve much more deeply into the subject matter.

From accessible introductions to astronomy, and the fascinating, but undeniably weird, quantum world, to updates from intrepid planetary robots and the latest on the search for extra-terrestrial life and personal space travel, Beyond Planet Earth will take audiences on a journey that is truly out of this world.

Central to Beyond Planet Earth, with STFC's support, is an exploration of the world-class innovation and research made possible by STFC. We will work with local, national and international partners, including the Royal Observatory Edinburgh, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, the University of Edinburgh's College of Science and Engineering and School of Physics and Astronomy, the Boulby Underground Laboratory, the National Space Academy, the UK Centre for Astrobiology, and many more. We will work with these partners to incorporate their projects and research into Beyond Planet Earth events, providing audiences with fascinating insights into a broad range of space science topics, including dark matter, the origins of the universe, protoplanetary systems, terraforming planets, upcoming space missions, and topics such as the Philae lander which have already captured the public's imagination.

Comprising of a series of 14 events and activities, including city-wide Street Science bikes, and a large-scale event in the National Museum of Scotland, Beyond Planet Earth aims to engage with approximately 12,000 people overall (with 4,000 attending events/activities that directly showcase STFC projects and research).

Edinburgh International Science Festival has developed a wide range of projects, good practice, and science engagement events and approaches which have been adopted by partners across education programmes and science festivals. Edinburgh International Science Festival employs a permanent team who are therefore able to absorb learning gained from new projects, and use this to further grow the festival and our appeal to new audiences in future years.

Beyond Planet Earth will be a key strand of the 2016 Science Festival programme, and will be promoted to a broad demographic of the general public - in 2015 the Science Festival reached over 300,000 visitors who attended from across Scotland, the UK, and internationally.

We will raise awareness of this project and STFC to a wide public audience and to our network of partners through logo accreditation within the Science Festival programme, website, signage and sponsorship, and by promoting Beyond Planet Earth as a key element of our 2016 marketing and promotional strategy.

The Science Festival continues to have a high media impact. In 2015 our total audience reach was over 40 million people, with an advertising value equivalent of 4.5m. This was across print media including UK national papers, Scottish nationals, magazines, their online equivalents and broadcast media. We featured in, amongst others, The Times, the Guardian, the Observer, the Daily Mail, the Daily Telegraph, the Metro, The Herald, and the Edinburgh Evening News. Magazines we featured in included Tesco's free in-store magazine, Flybe's inflight magazine, and CityJet's inflight magazine. The Festival was also featured on BBC Radio 5 Live's Richard Bacon show to an audience of 450,000 listeners, and numerous times on BBC Radio Scotland, Forth FM, and STV national news, who broadcast live on multiple occasions from Festival events.

We have a particularly good profile amongst academia, business and industry, research councils and learning societies, leaders in science, engineering and technology, and wider science-based providers. These agencies and individuals generally have an interest and strategic alignment with STFC, which allows us to create extensive opportunities for networking and participation through Science Festival events.

We are also a key member of Festivals Edinburgh - a network of Edinburgh's twelve major festivals, including the world's largest arts festival - the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and the Edinburgh International Festival. We meet regularly with this network to discuss event ideas, share learning and best practice and discuss upcoming collaborations. The Science Festival is also an active member of the UK Science Festival network, and participates in discussions and the sharing of ideas with our peers in an on-going capacity.

The Festival itself also provides a showcase for high-quality science communication. During the 2016 Science Festival, we will be hosting visits for peers and guests from around the world, and will invite these guests to attend Beyond Planet Earth events. This will allow us to share our experiences, and provide inspiration and guidance to others hoping to organise similar events in the UK and internationally.