The period for submitting proposals for the 17th Science Festival is now open
The 2024 Science Festival is warming up. The 17th edition of the great meeting of science will be open to the public on 8 and 9 June 2024 at the Born Centre of Culture and Memory and at the Plaça Comercial, and now Barcelona City Council has opened the period for submitting proposals for the activities that will make up the programme. Until 1 February 2024, research centres, universities, institutions, facilities, entities, companies and other organisations with links to scientific knowledge can register their proposals for activities. All the information and the form for submitting proposals are available on the website of the 17th Science Festival.
Four main themes will be presented as the themes of the next edition. A major protagonist is water, which, in the midst of a drought unprecedented in the last hundred years, takes on critical relevance. A relevance that is accentuated by the fact that we are in the midst of the Decade of Ocean Sciences for Sustainable Development (2021-2030) and by the consolidation of Barcelona as a world reference for sailing and the blue economy, as host of the America’s Cup.
Climate change is another theme of the 2024 edition. Specifically, the next Festival aims to highlight knowledge and progress in the field of renewable energies and the impact of climate change on health. There are also two other themes that will be the focus of the 17th Festival: the potential and limits of artificial intelligence and, taking advantage of the fact that the 2024 Festival will take place in the vicinity of the excavations of the Born, archaeology. In addition to the central themes, as always, there is room at the Festival for any other science-related topic: biomedicine, the world of numbers and data, astronomy and space exploration, nanotechnology, the maker world, the interrelationship between art and science, scientific illustration, etc.
The activities include workshops and demonstrations, experimental and interactive activities, with the individual or collective participation of those attending; theatre, dance, music, humour, magic, storytelling, experiments and collective games; micro-talks aimed at the public over 16 years of age by researchers from numerous specialities; and unique spaces and permanent installations where the public, on their way through the Festival, can stop to experiment and gain new knowledge.
New this year, on Friday 7 June, there will be a morning session for schools to share projects from the Citizen Science in Schools programme.
The Science Festival is an annual citizens’ event organised by Barcelona City Council, through Barcelona Science and Universities in the framework of the Barcelona Capital of Culture and Science. The Science Festival is made possible by more than a hundred organisations related to science and research which, for each edition, design, propose and carry out a host of original, participatory activities with the capacity to make the public understand science in all its dimensions.