This year will see our Big Biology Day run for the third time. The last two years have been a huge success and it has been wonderful to see the public reaction to our very own mini science festival. The day has also been a fabulous way for different departments to work together to promote their own areas of biology to the public. What I have found most fantastic though is the huge amount of enthusiasm that our students have for events like these.
Now alongside these positives there are undoubtedly some challenges. Organising an event like this is very time consuming for one – and time is something that we can’t create more of no matter how hard we try. It is hard work, on top of all of the things that we do already and understandably, people can be reluctant to give up even more of their time when they are already stretched…… so why do we do it?
There are many reasons, but for me there are two main ones. The first is to ignite a passion for biology in young children – they are the biologists of the future. If they are not exposed to all the amazing different things that make up the fabulous world of biology – how can they know what it is that they love? The second is to engage the public with a subject that is fascinating and important and make them see that despite the fact that they aren’t academics – they may well still be biologists.
I don’t think Biology should be confined to those of us who have specialist qualifications – it is a subject that is open to everyone. It should be as accessible to a toddler as it is to a professor. Science subjects on the whole can be seen as a bit elitist but I don’t feel that way and I think we should work hard to break down barriers between those experts and the general public. We should spend some time talking to people about what we do as academics and listen to what they do as members of the public – there are some incredibly skilled and knowledgeable people out there!
Biologists are everywhere and they are interesting people, (even if I do say so myself!). Many of us have a specialist area (for me it’s the immune system) but a lot of us have a total fascination with all things biology. We love talking to anyone who will listen about anything and everything remotely biological, we have a passion for our subject as a whole – not just a specialist discipline. We are knowledgeable, and articulate, we are diverse and uniform, we are specialists and generalists, we are Biologists – and possibly so are you.
Join us at the Big Biology Day 2017 to see the diversity of our subject area and discover your own biology. The 3rd annual Big Biology Day will run on Saturday the 14th of October at the Science Centre in Stoke-on-Trent. It is predominantly aimed at primary aged children but is likely to be of interest to all age groups.
Our fabulous competition ‘The Great Biology Bake-Off’ will be returning once again and we have some absolutely fantastic prizes. So get yourself in the kitchen and cook up some biological delights! Keep your eyes peeled for more details coming soon…..
