One of my tasks is writing summaries of breaking science news stories. Fossilized fleas, malaria tests inspired by origami, the latest breakthrough in solar energy—all explained in 50 words at most. So it’s natural that I can’t get the Flame Challenge out of my head. It’s ingeniously simple: explain what’s happening inside a flame in a way that satisfies scientists—and intrigues 11-year-olds.

Alan Alda devised the challenge during the years he hosted the television show Scientific American Frontiers. He recently posed it to the readership of Science magazine. And the World Science Festival upped the ante by offering VIP Festival tickets the Flame Challenge winner (and yes, submissions will be read by real scientists and real 11-year-olds).

So if you’ve wanted to try exhibit development, this is the perfect time to do it. Just be prepared to get out the cardboard and duct tape (and a fire extinguisher) if you want to try getting people engaged in an activity—the other half of doing this job.

–Katherine

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My iPhone recently alerted me that I have filled it’s photo taking capacity to the brim, which means I had to upload a bunch of photos to my computer.  This is awesome, because I have tons of photos from the “recent past” to share.  Going through the photo stream brought to focus how much has happened in the past few months!  We’ve been all over the place getting ready for opening day.  I will review the phone highlights now, and go into depth with some of these events later this week. 

The team has kept busy on the weekends down at Market Collective.  For our April event we invited market goers to build a cardboard forest and for the May event we asked people about their favourite places in Calgary and within Alberta.

If you helped us with this project, you're awesome! Also click to see larger image.

If you click to enlarge this image, you can see that someone annotated one of their favourite places in Alberta to be the home of a cool cat. I support cool cat spotting!

Later in May we were exhibitors’ at Calgary’s International Children’s Festival!   You can read up on what we were up to here. 

In spite of the rain, Children's Fest is the best! Great theatre festival for all ages! My favourite show this year was Circus Incognitus. So wonderful and whimsical!

We continued with in-house fabrication of programming materials including electricity blocks, shadow puppet screens, and marble machines. 

Jeff and I sanding down blocks to be used for an electricity program. And Mr. Bill working hard on project construction. Any opportunity to work in the shop makes me the happiest person ever.

 A team of us has emptied out our programming supplies from all over the building and our external warehouse, all into one centralized area in the former WowTown.  These before and after shots should give you an idea of all the materials we currently have in house. 

WowTown is the former 'Iceberg Room' turning Titanic. It is huge. It is now filled with every programming material we've ever owned. We're working on getting it organized. It's like a more pleasant episode of Hoarders.

This is essentially the accumulation of 44 years of materials all in one room. We've tossed and recycled a lot of thngs we will never use, but we are still getting ready for our move. More on this later!

We found some weird things while cleaning up. Like several relic floppy disks and a sassy 'Grandma' calendar...

Offsite visits in July!  Katherine, myself and Lia Rogers from Dorkbot Calgary went to check out the Open Studio Day for the R.I.P. Workshop in Banff. 

We’ve had several meetings an entire Content Team to discuss and map out our deliverables and align our priorities for opening day.  All employee training has kicked off  as well.   We meet every Tuesday and Thursday so that upon completion, every member of staff from finance, house keeping, programs etc., will have the skills that they need to be a facilitator at the New Science Centre!  Training has been a blast!   

Photos of organizational meetings, which are essential at this point. And the middle right hand photo is from a training session where we re-created the colour of a memorable sky in our lives.

Also  – super exciting news –  last week the exhibits for Open Studio have arrived to two weeks ago to the New Science Centre Site!  Installation has commenced! 

These are not my iPhone photos. But I still felt the need to share them!

We’re going to get even busier now, so we try to squeeze fun in whenever we can!  Even if it’s jumping rope in the hallway.  

Dana jumping rope!

Stay tuned.  A lot of updates (both current and retrospective) to come! 

-Claudia

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Supposedly, the best people to talk to when you’re looking for a job are friends of your friends. You’ve already heard about the jobs your friends could suggest. Strangers are a shot in the dark. But a friend of a friend has fresh leads and knows some about what’s important for you.

Game designers are in the friend-of-a-friend category for exhibit developers. We share enough that their ideas are relevant, and we’re different enough that their ideas can be fresh and challenging. That’s what I found at Ludocity, a

collection of pervasive games, street games and new sports – social forms of play that take place in public spaces, such as city streets, parks and public buildings.

Their games look fun, but what really got me was the this thread in their forum: This is fun! And this isn’t. It’s a short but interesting and useful compilation of characteristics that … well, the title explains it. It’s what I’d imagine a friend of a friend would advise science centres to do. Like making programs that make visitors feel like heroes. Or being mindful that our exhibits don’t make people feel like they’re missing out. There you go.

–Katherine

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Present company excluded, the folks at Explora are hands-down my exhibit heroes. Their exhibits are thoughtful, contemplative and energizing.  This text from their website makes me so happy.

Explora’s exhibits
 are designed
 to engage visitors 
of all ages.

The scale of most exhibits 
is small, fitting on tabletops. 
The parts are hand-sized 
and made for handling.

We try to make exhibits 
with transactive qualities, 
such that both they and their users are changed 
even in small and unexpected ways by the encounter. 
There is evidence of previous activity for the next user.

When you play with Explora’s exhibits you feel like you are a better person. I know that sounds impossible, but its totally true. I strive to be as respectfully empathetic and thoughtful as you guys, Explora.

-dana

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We have been planning these awesome art pieces that mark the entries for E&I. There are 3 doors and there are 3 art pieces. At the first one visitors turn a crank to generate a small amount of electricity which lights some LEDs. The LEDs are behind a thin sheet of wood veneer so when they glow you see the title Energy & Innovation appear. (Like this clock.)

The second one is a wall of Thermochromic Ink. When visitors run their hands over the wall the ink heats up and the title is revealed. (Like this book cover.)

The third piece is a wall of interlocking gears. Each gear has a letter printed in it. Visitors turn a crank and when they turn it enough times, all of the gears line up to spell the title of the exhibition. Nice, right?

Maybe other members of the team saw this when we thought of the idea, but I hadn’t. Dan assures me it will still look cool in E&I even if it’s also on a Levi’s billboard in Manhattan. I know he’s right but I am still annoyed ‘cause Stephan Sagmiester has already thought of every cool idea possible and executed it in a really great way. Damn you, Sagmeister! Stop taking all the good ideas!

-dana

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I had been thinking about using found materials to insulate yourself for a long time. I’m not sure where the idea came from—maybe the unconventional insulators folks use when making Art Shanties (imagine an ice fishing hut covered in a layer of stuffed animals).

This time last year late one afternoon there was a snowstorm. After an exhausting week full of interviewing designers we armed ourselves for an adventure outside. I dressed in some disposable painters coveralls and fishing waders, Kris nabbed some coveralls and a reflective vest and Joleen (a former Exhibit Developer) had us wrap her in cling wrap. We put on goggles and giant sunglasses, grabbed cafeteria trays (we used to have more cafeteria trays than you can imagine) and went sledding. It was super fun, but we all got super cold. We came back inside after a few runs down the hill in the Amazement Park and made improvements to our outfits. Eugene finished whatever he was working on and joined in (with plastic wrap pants) and Katherine wore a giant vinyl caftan that doubled as a sled.

volunteers insulate themselves

A few days later we tested the exhibit with visitors. A high school girls’ basketball team from Lethbridge were the first to play with it. They giggled a lot and wrapped each other in newspaper and plastic wrap. Then they went outside and ran around like crazy in the snow to test their outfits. Over the course of the weekend a few visitors tried this exhibit, but most shied away. A couple of adult visitors walked by and said, “Well, we don’t want to do that but kids would like it.” (By the way, that is my least favorite comment people make when we’re testing exhibits–it is both condescending to kids and the activity.) I tried a few different iterations, but Insulate Yourself didn’t make the cut as a stand-alone exhibit. We’ll try it as a program—for people who share the value that looking ridiculous = coolness it’s great, and a Discovery Leader could spot those groups when they’re around.

-dana

Here’s a video of the NSC Exhibit Developers insulating themselves. Katherine gets credit for taking the photos, that’s why you won’t see her lovely vinyl poncho in any of the shots.

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This afternoon Mike and I went to the amazing Black Forest Wood Company to search for materials to build the exhibit tables for TSA. We chose several types of wood that we thought would be good for TSA and I stained half of each chunk so we could see how the colors will shift once the tables are finished.

On the floor by Mike’s desk, we sorted our wood samples based on what they looked like. Then we remembered that durability matters a lot in TSA, those tables are going to get beaten up everyday for the rest of their lives. So to evaluate the hardness we invented the new NSC standard hardness test—we forked it.

We nabbed a fork off Stacey’s desk and poked each wood sample to see how it would wear. (Sorry Stacey, that fork was probably for your lunch or something.)

The results of the fork test… Beech and hickory are the hardest light colored woods. Yay for beech and hickory!! Unfortunately, we think that hickory is kind of ugly.  So you can expect to see some lovely tables made out of beech and maple in TSA.  Unless, of course, beech and maple turn out to be unbearably expensive and then I guess it’s back to Black Forest to find more samples of wood to poke with a fork.

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