Physics@WOMAD 2016

WOMAD (http://womad.co.uk/) is a cultural festival that has been running since the early 1980s. It spans most of the culture, but with the exception of environmental talks has generally lacked science. The proposal is to run 18 hours of programming in a dedicated tent in the 2016 UK Festival with the title Physcis@WOMAD.

The proposal has arisen out of a longer discussion about initiating CERN@WOMAD, first in the UK and then at the other WOMAD Festivals worldwide. Given the available time and the current reorganisation of outreach at CERN, Lancaster has taken the lead with Mike Large of Real World to propose a pilot Physics@WOMAD in the UK in July 2016. The programme will be dominated by STFC science, but follow the Lancaster involvements and so be broader, involving Astronomy and Space science.
The intention is for this pilot to lead to a full engagement from CERN in 2017 and onward. This broader involvement could spin-out to the sister WOMAD events worldwide.

The proposed structure is 3 sessions running Friday-Sunday from 12-18:00. The first two hours of each session will be child-friendly, the remainder looking to a broader audience. The talks will be 30-40 mins with interaction, followed by questions and turn-around time. We will also run stargazing sessions at night, weather permitting.
The event will have its own dedicated tent with ~200 seats and a stage, with digital screens above a stage. We intend to have some display items, including a cloud chamber in a dark area, with a TV camera to relay the activity to a larger audience. We are in discussion with members of LHCb about reusing some aspects of the stand they are preparing for the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, and will also investigate reusing items from the Higgs and new physics RSSE stalls in 2013 and 2014.

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 supporting the full CERN@WOMAD proposal in 2017. 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 which 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.