Lesley Paterson on an Ingenious project

Engineers will be learning the art of storytelling through a project that won one of fourteen awards recently announced by the Royal Academy of Engineering.  The Digital Stories project will help 24 early career engineers develop their communications skills as part of the Academy’s public engagement grants scheme, known as Ingenious – engaging citizens; engaging engineers.

The aim of the Ingenious programme is to create a community of engineers who will have the knowledge and motivation to raise public awareness and take part in debate about engineering and its impact on society. The Digital Stories project will involve engineers in a four-day creative workshop that will result in short pieces of self-produced television or internet video.

Different approach

Project leader Trevor Cox, Professor of Acoustics Engineering at the University of Salford, says: ‘By enhancing their storytelling and editorial skills, the participants gain insights into a different approach to communication, different from that traditionally used in engineering.’

The project will train the engineers in personal narrative, which uses a non-linear communication approach based on experiences rather than statistics or logic. As well as promoting new engagement and media skills, it will encourage the participants to consider what it means to be an engineer, and how engineering will impact on the 21st century. 

The short films will be shown to both the public and the engineering community, at science festivals, museums and art galleries, academic conferences and on local BBC websites.

Engaging Engineers

A question that has been frequently asked is ‘what is the best way to encourage engineers and scientists to engage with the public?’ Reward and recognition? Carrots and sticks? Academic cultural change?

The Ingenious scheme was founded on the basis that, for those new to the field, public engagement can be a daunting endeavour. The scheme makes grants to fund projects that provide much-needed training and mentoring support to engineers across the UK, from different disciplines and levels. The projects are all delivered by people with experience in the field.

Manchester University is directing its Ingenious funding towards public engagement training and experiential opportunities for PhD engineers. Edinburgh University is targeting much more senior academics, to provide guidance and practical support on presenting to non-specialist adult audiences. The Oxford Trust’s Ingenious-funded project is looking to build capacity for industrial engineers to take part in various public dialogue and debate events.

Engaging Citizens

The government’s Science and Society vision has recently been published for consultation (1). One of the introductory chapters is dedicated to the evolution of science communication. It (arguably) attributes the birth of the public understanding of science movement to The Bodmer report, published by the Royal Society in 1985 (2). Fifteen years later the publication of the Third Report of the House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology called for a new approach that moved from didacticism to dialogue (3). This was followed by talk of a move ‘upstream’, catalysed by a publication from Demos in 2004 that made the case for early citizen engagement in the discussion of emerging technologies (4).

There are many engineering advancements that ought to be considered by the wider public because of their significant potential impacts and implications for society: robotics and artificial intelligence; surveillance; synthetic biology; electronic databases for use in health and identification; technologies for the mitigation of climate change; and innovations to meet the needs of an ageing population.

Numerous tracking surveys of public attitudes to science and technology have taken place since Bodmer’s report. It is not, however, the public that need to change. In the quest to enable citizen engagement, the change that is required is in the attitudes of science, engineering and the policy communities to the value of society’s voice.

Reference

1. http://interactive.dius.gov.uk/
scienceandsociety/site/

2. Walter Bodmer (1985), The public understanding of science, The Royal Society

3. House of Lords Select Committee on Science and Technology (2000), Science and Society, HMSO

4. J Wilsdon, R Willis (2004), See-through science, Demos

Dr Lesley Paterson is Head of Public Engagement at The Royal Academy of Engineering