Barcelona

The Born Centre of Culture and Memory and the Plaça Comercial, as well as two spaces of the Ciutadella del Coneixement, the Greenhouse and the Martorell Exhibition Centre, became a great scientific laboratory last weekend. On the 7th, 8th and 9th of June, the spaces hosted the 160 activities of the 17th Science Festival, which brought together nearly 20,000 people who enjoyed shows, workshops, experiments, itineraries, games, presentations, debates, live music and much more. 400 people from some 140 entities and institutions led the different proposals.

As a novelty, the closing day of the Citizen Science in Schools programme kicked off the festival on Friday morning. At the meeting, around 200 students from eight schools took part in the morning session aimed at presenting the research projects that have formed part of this year’s programme, and they did so together with part of the projects’ scientific team.

During the weekend, the activities were open to all citizens, among which four themes took special relevance in this edition: the sea, archaeology, artificial intelligence and climate change. For the second year running, visitors were able to take part in a new edition of the Discover the enigma clue game, where three people won a set of scientific prizes in a draw made from all the tickets collected during the festival. The prizes will be awarded at the Born Centre of Culture and Memory soon.

Once again this year, the Mathematical Challenges and the Scientific Challenges attracted a large number of people of all ages who were able to put their skills to the test. The Solar Observatory also encouraged many people to learn about the properties of the Sun, even at times when clouds made direct observation with the telescope difficult. The Minerals in Conflict exhibition, located on one side of the Born site, and the guided tours that were organised, aroused considerable interest throughout the weekend. Another very successful space was The Physics of Music, where the public was able to discover the main characteristics of sound through experimentation.

The Moragues room in the old Born market was also very busy over the two days, as it contained the Reading Space, the Niu de Ciència (aimed at the public aged 0 to 6 years) and the Science Games. In addition, in this edition, there were some activities led by young people. This is the case of various activities that took place in the Young Science space and in the Explainers space, where students from the 4th year of ESO and Baccalaureate brought scientific concepts closer to visitors.

The Ciutadella del Coneixement was present at this festival. On the one hand, the Biodiversity space hosted the Barcelona Zoo activity Agents for the defence of biodiversity, which attracted quite a large audience throughout the festival. On the other hand, the Greenhouse offered guided tours and the Climate Machine exhibition, while the Martorell Exhibition Centre hosted two open days. The activities that took place in the Ciutadella Park as part of the festival attracted more than 3,000 visitors over the weekend.

The Dolors Aleu stage brought to the dais a series of shows of all kinds with successful attendance over the two days, with Saturday’s closing performance by the DJ duo Beyond Collapse and their show Music with AI from a future world, which combined electronic music and artificial intelligence and attracted a good number of people until 11pm. Also in the evening, the Science Slam, in which ten speakers put their science communication skills to the test in just five minutes, filled the Born stage with an audience that voted for the best micro-talk. Is the sky hot? is the title of the winning micro-talk of the competition.

The Science Festival is an initiative coordinated by Barcelona City Council through Barcelona Science and Universities, with the involvement of a large number of people and organisations. It is one of the city’s leading science dissemination events, bringing the leading research being carried out in Barcelona and its area of influence within the reach of the general public.