Thank you to Joan Leach for the President’s Update.
We’ve been living through ‘interesting times’ — an election that seemed to go on forever, even after the voting, and then there is Brexit and watching the US unravel. If you’re in a funk, I’m with you. But, Kate Driver at Questacon brightened a recent day with an email about a keynote that she heard at the 2016 Ecsite conference; ASC members in the museum and science centre context will recognise this as the conference for the European Network of Science Centres and Museums. Dr Elizabeth Rasekoala, President of African Gong, gave the keynote and identified a range of issues for the science centre world (and popular science in general) that resonated and challenged me to think through my funk and about the issues of globalization, racism, and gender equality in relation to science. It’s worth a listen/watch on Youtube.
And the rumblings of the great machine of ASC coming to life ahead of National Science Week can already be heard far and wide. I’m looking forward to it this year… let’s keep the ASC list hopping with announcements about what we’re doing. And, let’s also make some time to talk about what we’re doing, how, why, and how well it all went.