Physics@WOMAD 2018 and set-up for Physics@WOMAD 2019

WOMAD (http://womad.co.uk/) is a cultural festival that has been running since the early 1980s. It spans most of the culture, but until our introduction of the Physics Pavilion in 2016 and with the exception of environmental talks, it generally lacked science.

The initial aim of the 2016 pilot was to lead to a fuller engagement from CERN in 2017 and onward; this has met with success. The second aim was to spread the idea to the sister festivals around the world. WOMAD Adelaide will have a similar activity and similar approaches have been set up in Denmark and Slovakia.

After a highly successful Pavilion in both 2016 and 2017, we have been asked to return 'bigger and better' as a fixture at the festival, used in its pre-publicity. The earlier objective to establish an explicitly science strand in the broad WOMAD cultural festivals has been met.

The total footfall in 2017 over 3 days was ~6400, an increase from ~4000 the previous year, due to an increase in tent and gazebo capacity. For the next events, the two previous aims remain.

The overall aims are to engage a broad family audience with the ideas behind STFC science and physics in general; to excite them with the possibilities and concepts; and to offer smaller groups to join in activities illustrating the science and technologies.

The presence of Physics@WOMAD will be advertised through the event itself, on its website and through its promotional material. The success of the event is being monitored by CERN with a view to increased involvement. The IoP will also be monitoring the event. We will report on the successes and failures to assist other possible science engagement with cultural festivals. (Glastonbury and Latitude might be obvious targets; WOMAD was chosen because of contact with the organizers, one of whom was a physicist by degree and an IoP member, and who visited ATLAS.)
The output will be in education and engagement, and so not produce direct reusable output. We are attempting to make use of pre-existing material for the talks, so no new items are being created. The content and formats developed for this festival can be reused for other such festivals worldwide.