In today’s episode recorded live at the National Science and Media Museum during the Association for Science and Discovery Centres Annual Conference we’re exploring what’s on the horizon for Science and Discovery Centre’s right now, over the next 5 years and longer term over 25 years
In today’s episode, recorded live at the National Science and Media Museum during the Association for Science and Discovery Centres Annual Conference 2025, we’re exploring what’s on the horizon for Science and Discovery Centres right now, over the next 5 years, and looking even further ahead to the next 25 years.
It’s a throwback to the break between Seasons 6 and 7, when Paul Marden was invited to the ASDC National Conference in Bradford, at the height of the Bradford City of Culture celebrations. It was Paul’s first time in Bradford, but not his first ASDC conference, and this one was an absolute standout.
At the end of the first day, Paul gathered a brilliant panel of delegates to unpack the conference’s central theme: the Now, Next, and Future for Science Centres.
Joining Paul on the panel were:
Let’s head back to Bradford for a fascinating conversation about innovation, engagement, and the long-term vision shaping the future of science discovery in the UK.
Show references:
Jo Quinton-Tulloch - Director, National Science and Media Museum
David Jones, Community Engagement Manager, International Centre for Life
Natalie Whitehead, Founder and Director, Exeter Science Centre
Stephen Breslin, CEO, Glasgow Science Centre and Chair of ASDC
Shaaron Leverment - CEO, Association for Science and Discovery Centres ASDC
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Paul Marden: Welcome to Skip the Queue, the podcast telling the story of the world's best visitor attractions and the amazing people that work in them. I'm your host, Paul Marden, with a very bad case of man flu and a gravelly voice. So sorry about that today.
In today's episode, it's a throwback to the break between season six and seven when I was invited to the Association for Science and Discovery Centre's national conference at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford at the height of the Bradford City of Culture celebrations. It was my first time in Bradford, but not my ASDC conference. It was an absolute corker this year and I took some time out at the end of the first day with a panel of delegates to discuss the main theme of the conference, the Now Next and Future for Science Centres.
Paul Marden: I was joined on my panel by Jo Quinton-Tulloch, the Director of the National Science and Media Museum. David Jones, Community Engagement Manager for the International Centre for Life. Natalie Whitehead, the founder and Director of Exeter Science Centre. Stephen Breslin, the CEO of Glasgow Science Centre and Chair of asdc, as well as friend of the podcast, Sharon Leverman, CEO of asdc. Now let's head back in time to the panel in Bradford.
Paul Marden: If we had an audience behind us, I would have insisted on a big yell. There we go. We always kick off the episode with some icebreaker questions. So I've got three and I think they're nice ones for you. First one, if you could invent a national holiday, what would you celebrate?
Natalie Whitehead: Is it too cliche to say science?
Paul Marden: I think it might be. I think you could go a little bit more than that.
Natalie Whitehead: People in science and their diversity, their stories, because there's so many interesting people working in the sector. And how cool would it be if you could have just a real celebration of that?
Paul Marden: You could have a Scientist a Day calendar, couldn't you, where you could celebrate everybody.
David Jones: That's not giving me a good picture book in the calendar.
Paul Marden: Okay. Which were you best at school? Science, technology, engineering, arts or maths?
Stephen Breslin: Maths.
Paul Marden: Okay, Jo,
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: Arts.
Paul Marden: It had to be, didn't it, for your museum? What about you, Shaaron?
Shaaron Leverment: I was equally good at all of them. No, arts and science were my top notch subjects.
Paul Marden: Excellent.
Natalie Whitehead: Same for me, actually. Art and science.
Paul Marden: Yeah. Really?
Shaaron Leverment: Which particular science?
Natalie Whitehead: Physics, I think.
Paul Marden: Oh yeah.
Natalie Whitehead: I did like biology though.
Paul Marden: I loved biology. But even to this day I'm rubbish at chemistry and physics. Just I cannot get my head around physics at all.
Shaaron Leverment: See, that's the sort of stereotyping we're trying to break down.
Paul Marden: It's too abstract for me, I think. David, what about you?
David Jones: Actually, maths and sciences. I relate to sciences and elite maths, art. If you ask me to draw something new, it. It's going to be a stick man.
Paul Marden: Do you know, I'm discovering my hidden artist, actually, as I age, because at school I would have swore blind that I could not draw at all. And it's only in the last few years that I've started to try to learn to paint. And it is just practise, like cookery or any skill, isn't it? It's just practise. And as soon as you get past the painful bit, I'm still rubbish, but I quite enjoy doing it.
David Jones: It's interesting though, because when you work in a science centre, you do get drawn in to do some different activities and I would never have thought for a second that I would have been making, for example, clay faces as part of a Christmas activity with the team. So were making these and they were to be Christmas decorations for trees. So you ended up making. It was meant to be a self portrait. Now if you had said to me, here's a lump of clay, make something with it and I'm going to go, no, I couldn't do that at school. But working in a science centre somehow breaks down some barriers and encourages you to try things that you might not have tried before in a safe way.
David Jones: So it's interesting you see how your view has changed a bit and actually I truly would say mine has too.
Paul Marden: Okay, last one. Completely frivolous, but part of the inspiration for earlier seasons of Skip the Queue was our founder, Kelly, and her collection of robbers that she. She collected from erasers from. Yes, from different museums and attractions. So was there anything that you collected as a kid from your museum visits, your zoos?
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: Not as a kid, but flip books. You know, those little flip books that you run through. Sadly, I still haven't got them for sale yet in our museum, but I have a friend who's very passionate about them and he sends me them regularly. So we both have a collection. Mine is mainly due to him, but they're wonderful and very artistic as well.
Shaaron Leverment: The ones where you get like Michael Jackson Moonwalker.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: Exactly. Yes. But some of them are really clever. So I've got one that you can do six different stories in a flip book.
Paul Marden: Wow.
David Jones: It's possible.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: Yeah, yeah. Flip books.
Paul Marden: I've got to get it on sale in the gift shop. Got to. Let's move on to some questions about today. So we are. We're halfway through the programme now. We've had our table talks, which always a favourite part of the event for me, because you get to sit with some other people and have a chat, don't you? And they're quite curated talk. So some of the questions I've got around some of the talks that we've got today, some around things that we're going to see tomorrow. But let's start with something that's close to my heart. So adapting your science centre to digital development and potentially AI. So this was a subject of a number of different conversations today.
Paul Marden: Chris Dunford, previously of this podcast last year, who is the sustainability director at we the Curious, he had a table talk all around AI that Joe and I were both sat at. I know from the Rubber Cheese survey that we put out every year to visitor attractions. Lots of people playing with AI, but nobody really building it. Not many people building it into the core of their work. Is this something that you're embracing either as a business tool or to some way communicate what you do better to your audiences?
Stephen Breslin: I think we're all using it more as a business tool, whether individually or at a corporate level. We're all starting to explore its power and it does add to value. There's no question to lots of different tasks. And I suppose my worry with AI is that we're going to forget how to do things for ourselves and to think. And I think that's the big concern for young people. AI does a lot of things, but one of the things that humans do uniquely well is we're creative and innovative. And I think if there is anything that we should focus on in the AI age is to create that innovative and creative mindset and nurture that within young people. Because that's what we're going to need.
Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. I think it's hugely important. I think there's one thing that Chris was making the point about was the sustainability impact of AI, because it is hugely energy hungry and so consequently carbon hungry, both in the learning stages and in the query and exploitation. Is this something that is a subject that is discussed at your centres?
Natalie Whitehead: I think it also uses a lot of water as well, horrendously, these cooling towers and things which obviously don't have any power for us. So do you say, do we restrict our usage of it, or should we use an exhibit that utilises AI and engages people with it, but they're constantly doing queries? That would be a bit of a concern, I think, for us. But then you can say, well, you know, I Suppose you have to balance that, don't you? And just in the same way as having a fire, tornado or some other exhibit that consumes a lot of car, you know, generates a lot of carbon in the. In the usage, for example, would you. Should you restrict that? I don't know.
Paul Marden: That was exactly the conversation were having at the table, wasn't it?
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: And also, Chris made the really good point that actually, at the moment, there isn't a mechanism for us to calculate the energy consumption or the energy impact of any of our use of AI. The governments haven't got one, the industry obviously hasn't got one. So at the moment they're having to make their own to test themselves, find a way of themselves of measuring what they think the impact is of the use of AI to enable them to make decisions about whether and how much they're going to use it. So the fact that no one is actually measuring it in the first place is really telling.
Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. And we, the curious, have taken the attitude of. They have restricted usage of it across their teams, but they've got a small pilot group where they're genuinely trying to work out what is the impact, the CO2 impact of what they do, how does it compare to other activities? Because they've got a big A ban on flying within the UK and within Western Europe. If it's under 20 hours, you have to take the train, even though it's more expensive. They've made the business case that is the right thing for them to do. So should, you know, is this a bigger problem than travel or is it a smaller problem than travel? It's really hard to understand.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: And we can't make informed decisions at the moment because there's no way of measuring it. So what the work they're doing is really fascinating.
Paul Marden: I think so, absolutely.
Shaaron Leverment: Yeah. I just echo probably the frivolous use of AI, you know, making your face into a dog or how Natalie's face looks like a dog. You know, maybe we cut that stuff out. But yeah, I also think that, you know, people are worried about sort of AI, and, you know, there's been some reports out saying the. Which jobs are going to go and other people saying, no, AI isn't going to take your job, but the company using AI is, and actually that kind of competitive edge in a world or a landscape where there isn't a lot of money going around. It's very difficult to say as a business, not to restrict the use of AI when one person can do a team's work. If you're using it. But yeah, as you say, we need more data.
Paul Marden: Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a, there's some frivolous use that I've seen just recently that I talked about at the table, which is the proliferation of people using AI note takers. It's sometimes even multiple note takers in a meeting. And I just wonder, you know, what's the cost of that and genuinely what's the benefit of it? Who's going to read that volume of notes that are being transcribed? It just seems to me to be wasteful. And you had a wake up call, didn't you?
David Jones: Yeah.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: So the Science Museum group use the Microsoft pilot as a kind of internal tool. And very recently a meeting was set up on teams and an external person was invited to that meeting and we didn't realise that they had signed up to one of the many note takers that now are available for anybody to use. So they were invited to the meeting, they were an external person. The irony is they didn't actually attend. But after the. But because they'd been. Because their note taker, their AI note taker had been invited, it in effect attended the meeting. And the only thing we realised afterwards, so it very helpfully sent round the summary of the meeting to everybody who attended the meeting.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: Now, what that then tells you is that AI notetaker now has access to all of our internal data because it's got access straight the way through. So our ICT team, who are very hot on these things, immediately had to do a sweep to completely remove it from our entire systems. And we're now much more alert to that potential. And it was, you know, I don't think there was any malicious intent there, but before you know it, AI can be within your systems without you even inviting it in.
Paul Marden: Absolutely, absolutely. So there was another table talk that I was at that was Tom Lyons and Helen Liddell from STEM Learning who were talking about unforgettable online events and I was super impressed. They are putting online events and National Space Day and they've got a number of different events that they've put on. Whole day events, full production value with crews and studios putting serious investment into it, but also getting serious in getting engagement from teachers and schools. They were talking about tens of thousands, 60,000 people attending one of their online events. And I wondered if online was something that you've been looking at for your attractions.
Stephen Breslin: It's something we started looking at very seriously during COVID Yes. When we closed our centres, we needed to Keep in touch with our audiences. So we would create a small piece of video content every day of the lockdown and broadcast that. But then what we did when schools went back, but the schools weren't allowed to visit us and weren't allowed to visit the schools, we started to structure that content into modules. So we would take a particular theme like energy or life sciences and we would create 10 weeks of content that we would drip feed into schools over a two month period. And then when the schools were allowed to come back, the visit to the Science Centre was part of that structured learning, the culmination.
Stephen Breslin: Yeah, it was the highlight of this extended engagement rather than a one off day out and visit to the Science Centre. And one of the dynamics that we've seen, and I have seen this by chance, I was walking down our bottom corridor and a school was coming in and they stopped at the bottom of the escalators and. And the teacher turned to the kids and said we're going straight up to powering in the future because that's what we've been doing in the class for the last few weeks. So that combination of the virtual and in person event has created so much more impact and the opportunity to engage over that extended period.
Paul Marden: Yeah. So the impact of what they're doing is enriched because they've done lots of prep for it. I wonder if it all encourages more visits as well, that by putting all of the materials together that you have done in the structured way that you have done, whether it leads more schools to buy into the journey. Because we know lots of schools aren't actually going out and doing school visits anymore, are they? And by you reaching out to them in the first place and providing them with resources, it's more than just a day out, isn't it? It's a journey that has enriched throughout all of their year worth of learning.
Stephen Breslin: That's right. And it becomes embedded in the curriculum.
Paul Marden: Offer for the school, you become almost indispensable then, don't you? It really does make a stickiness to the engagement with you as a place for them to visit.
Shaaron Leverment: I was going to say, I think there's a really brilliant place for digital engagement in schools, you know, especially the sort of more rural and remote and small schools. There's no way that they're going to be able to get a coach cost that cost them 750 quid to come to their nearest science and discovery centres. But those kind of outreach activities or digital engagement is a really good way of engaging. However, part of the USV of What science and discovery centres do is that public engagement, that community engagement, those family engagement. And when we look across the data of people who are prioritising digital events, and we ask in our survey, who's coming to these events overwhelmingly? Is it a new audience? Yes. What kind of new audience? Well, it's geographically new.
Shaaron Leverment: It's not necessarily the people who are more marginalised, less confident in stem, it's not necessarily the families who we actually potentially might reach. It's not. Not necessarily opening up accessibility in all the ways that we might want to and in all the ways you're not.
Paul Marden: Going deeper into the group that you're already talking to, you're going to a wider group, to the same people who.
Shaaron Leverment: I'm talking about public at the moment. I certainly sort of family, but, you know, you probably have to have quite a lot of sort of high science capital, so to speak to sort of sign up to something like this as a family unit or as someone. I'll. I'll ask David over here, who lives and breathes accessibility. I don't know if you've found the same in terms of digital, but that's just when we look at the survey data. People have said since COVID it has changed, yes, I'm still prioritising digital, but it's now more access, wider, nationally, internationally, rather than the way of engaging people who are currently underrepresented in the people who walk through the doors.
David Jones: I thought it was. I mean, with my community hat on. One of the things I am is I'm a director of a school trust, so I'm involved with nine schools. And I think one of the things that science centres per se misses an opportunity is to try to target the science leads for each school because they have such an impact on the school delivery. So a science centre putting forward a good quality project at base doesn't mean that it's going to be maximised in school use, because unless the science lead gets it and strong enough to be able to influence the other teachers that are receiving it wouldn't have its maximum impact. But good opportunities are there to be taken.
David Jones: And I've seen, because I'm involved with nine schools and I've done some outreach with the team, I've seen actually how the same project can be received differently at a different school and there is a change there and that's maybe something that we could polish up on and make more impact with.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: It's interesting because a couple of years ago the Science Museum group did a piece of work with some consultants to think about if they wanted to do more work online digitally, where should they be putting their energies and efforts? And is it into our own websites or is it actually onto one of the other very many platforms that now exist? So I guess what this is looking to do is to reach more people who don't normally come to visit us online. And actually the conclusion of all of that was that YouTube is now the most popular platform above and beyond anything else. So we put. So we had a finite amount of money and all of that money, effort went into creating a series of films of the right length for the right audience on YouTube.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: But we are now also here at National Science and Media Museum about to pilot a period on TikTok. So the Science Museum group isn't on TikTok. It speaks so strongly to our collections and our subject areas. So of course we've got lots of opportunity. But again, thinking about people who know us and who already work with us will come to our websites. But if you're looking to get new audience, you need to go to where they are more than anywhere else.
Natalie Whitehead: So I don't know if you've experienced the moral dilemma with TikTok. So we want to be on there because we see that there are lots of people on there and this is where a lot of young people get their climate information, for example. That's one of the stats we've had. But the thing is, it's such an addictive platform. In order to get people seeing your content, you need to make content that people are going to want to watch and are going to see. And so you're in this dilemma of you need to create stuff that's going to keep them, to be honest, addicted to that platform. I mean, there are other platforms like even YouTube, but Instagram, that have that same kind of appeal or draw or obsessive kind of thing. I don't know, we're still umming and ahhing.
Paul Marden: I've never thought of it in that way, but it is, it's an important factor to consider, isn't it?
Natalie Whitehead: We're still on the fence. We haven't decided yet, but probably we're going to have to be there and.
Shaaron Leverment: You have to keep doing it as well.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: That's the thing.
Natalie Whitehead: And especially when we've heard things about, you know, the way that people are targeted or just depending on the demographics you say you put yourself in, if you're a young female or a young male or whoever you are, you know, I think they target certain information to you differently and it's do we want to be part of that? But, you know, it's hard.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: I'm told there's a lot of science communicators out there doing fantastic work on TikTok. It's really powerful and. And making us. Yeah, so it'll be. Yeah, it can be used for. Yeah.
Paul Marden: So Stephen Franklin, who has presented for you guys before and was at ri and he had a huge back catalogue of stuff that he could show that was all shorts, it was all small snippets and if it had an explosion in it, you know, the huge amounts of engagement and you do have to wonder the kind of. The moral dilemma of whether it's right to do it. But there is a clear association between the engagement. Engagement and the outcomes that they were looking for.
Shaaron Leverment: There's a lot of discussion about digital at this conference, actually. You know, whether or not if were to do a new flagship space exhibition, should it be digital or Tomorrow there's a session run by Hassan from the Edinburgh Science about called the Future Isn't digital. It's dramatic.
David Jones: Yes.
Shaaron Leverment: So you definitely need to be in on that one.
Paul Marden: All of you keep on segueing to other subjects that I want to do. So that's a really good story, Segway. So let's take that. That one. There's a thread around the public connection to science through theatre or through the arts that let's explore. I really loved our keynote earlier on. Shahnaz Gizar, who is part of Bradford city of culture 2025. There we go. Thank you. And she was talking about a movement for st. Then at one of the tables that I was discussing over lunch, I talked to Darcy from the National Space Centre. She's got a programme around using dance to engage families with autistic children and enabling them to learn more about science. So my question for you guys are, how are you putting the A into steam within your attraction or your science centre?
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: I would argue that certainly museums and I think science centres as well have been doing this for a very, very long time. We work with all sorts of different artists to create different ways of engaging with science as content, and I think that's steam. But I agree with Shehnaz because I think that there is still more work to be done to make sure that we're not separating and art and science. I think very quickly, people, she's right about choosing art or science at school and I think that's a terrible shame. How you overcome that, I don't know. But both of them are about asking questions about being curious, about being creative, about answering questions, about coming up with ideas, new ways of thinking about the world. So I don't think we should separate them.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: I do think that we've used art an awful lot in science centres and sites and museums, and I think we'll continue to do so.
Paul Marden: I think there's been some really interesting work that the London Transport Museum has done over the last couple of years, but specifically in the last six months. So they've got the benefit of a really large theatre in the museum, and so they've had a show in theatre where you could learn about the life of Harry Beck, the guy that designed the Tube map, so that you can see the direct relationship between the material that they've got, the engineering and the science and the mapping around what they did and the show that in theatre. But they've also had taken people from the opera house next door and brought them into the museum. And you can directly see the blending of the art into the science and the technology in the museum of what they've got there.
Paul Marden: I wonder, is it something that you've looked at?
Stephen Breslin: We've kind of always done it through our science shows. The science shows are works of theatre.
Paul Marden: Yes.
Stephen Breslin: So we'll take the one we're working on just now, which is quite challenging, is photonics. How do you create an engaging science show around the science of light and lasers? And that is a work of theatre, you know, engaging the audience, the young people in a very technical and quite complex scientific discipline.
Shaaron Leverment: Yes, I have a slight sort of provocation. I mean, I've always seen the two as, you know, two sides of the same sort of coin, really. You know, they're beautiful lenses to see the world and you can see through, you know, the same eyes that appreciate, you know, both. But there is a sort of, I suppose, a wonder of number one, where, you know, what about sort of sports and music and humanities. Someone was saying, put them all together and you'll get hamster. You know, like, when do we stop? You know, we. And also the feeling that art is a beautiful lens on the world, but that science has that criticality as well and that robustness and that way of understanding the world. And so, you know, what you want is the partnership of the two, Right. You want the scientist and the artist.
Shaaron Leverment: You don't really want just artists doing stem, you don't want just scientists doing the art. But the partnership has to be a really strong bridge and a value to both sides, you know, and, you know. Yeah. So I think there's something there about how can you get into where the funding comes from? You could get into all sorts of discussions there.
Paul Marden: Absolutely.
Shaaron Leverment: But you know, there is something about that, because otherwise the rigour of science and that feeling that you are trying to understand the world better, you know, rather than view the world or express the world or you are in science arts as well. But I don't know, there's some. There's something there that I can't quite grapple with. I do absolutely value it, but I don't know why we stop there. Because people do talk about STEM with medicine in it, you know, and everyone's already annoyed about the forgotten E and the forgotten M in stem. So, you know, then it's the forgotten A and then it's the forgotten medicine. And then what about the.
Natalie Whitehead: So we're a STEAM centre with a double M, right? And that's how we set up originally because were like, okay, we really should have this creative and, you know, engage the creative industries because there's so much they can bring to it to make science meaningful. But, you know, vice versa, there's lots of things going on. But I have to say, like Sharon was saying, we almost want to be an everything centre. Why not bring in literature and humanities and history in a way? But then we say, well, no, no, we are still about science. Because science doesn't really have that prominence in culture really as it should, except in science centres. And so in a way we almost gonna think of going back to being a STEM centre because it's.
Natalie Whitehead: Yeah, we're focusing on stem, but then, you know, we are still gonna make all those connections to all the other things. But I don't know, at the moment we're still steam again, we're still on the fence. It's very difficult.
David Jones: I think that the thing is that the art brings an opportunity. And I'll give you an example of something we've got in the Life Science Centre. So in our labs recently, they've had artwork put in them and we have a deaf science club. And one of the pieces of art is a scientist, a lady scientist with a rainbow in the background. And the scientist has ear defenders on and has a cochlear implant at the side. And the science club was taking place and this wee girl suddenly got really excited because she said, there's never anybody here that looks like me. And look, there's somebody there. Looks me. So art brings possibility to welcoming communities in a way that we maybe don't always see. And the reality is we've got them. We're bringing these things and we're doing these things.
David Jones: We're showing that the science centres are accessible for all. We're making small changes, but actually what we don't always see in the moment. And I feel in a very privileged place because I'm working so closely with the communities. I see the results of those almost brave decisions that somebody says, seeing that bit of artwork, we just put something on that to make it more accessible. And actually I see the communities responding to that and it's really powerful. And so I think we're doing all these kind of things quite regularly without actually saying that's the art that we bring into our centre. And that's the. That's the link I'm seeing. Really. Yeah.
Paul Marden: Let's follow your segue. Very well done, by the way, to let's talk about uplifting voices of young people. Okay. Last year's ASDC conference, Z King won the Marsh Youth Voice Award. And it was a really interesting story about there was a hugely powerful video, no dry eye in the house when that video played of what Z had done and how they benefited from their interaction with the Science Centre. But I'm interested, David, for you to share a little bit about the story of Z. But what does life get from those interactions with young people? Because it's not altruistic. Lifting these voices up is not just for their benefit, it's for yours as well, isn't it?
David Jones: The story of Z very simplistically started with a trust that we'd had with this young group of people. And when Covid came along, we tried to create a way of keeping these young people connected when they were isolated. And as part of these regular Friday 20 minute catch ups, myself and what my colleagues from Northeast Autism Society said, we're speaking online at an international conference about some of the autism work that we've been doing. So, blah, blah. Next morning, Kerry came into work on the Monday And Zed had Mr. Step who, as Zed, took her camera, took their camera up to their bedroom and showed us all the accessibility adjustments they'd made in their bedroom. And went, wow, that's brilliant. We'll tell people at the conference what you've showed us.
David Jones: And the Monday morning when Kerry came into work, Zed, I'd put it together as a PowerPoint presentation. I can feel the hairs of Martin standing up here. Put it together as a PowerPoint presentation. We then said, actually, after this, what can we do with this? How can we tell the story? We need to Ask this young person to share the platform with us, to share the stage with them, with her mum's permission and with her mum being there, of course. But this was like, I think they were 11 at the time. That's a huge thing to do. But what were doing is we created an opportunity for a young person to tell everybody how it really is so we could all make adjustments that might support this community.
David Jones: And Zed's really fortunate that they understand their own autism and are very able to tell me, you're causing me a problem and this is what you're doing. If you stop doing that, I'll be able to cope with this. Great. Because I can help to influence the centre. So what's happened on the back of that real trust that we built up was that Z has helped to influence the centre. So we don't always get it right. And we first admit that we don't always get it right. But having advocates within communities who are critical friends on our behalf help us to more often get it right. So when we miss something, for example, we have a visual story and the visual story, we produce it and we put it up live. And then Zed will come and test it, test drive it for us.
David Jones: And without doubt, Zed will pick faults in it. Now, it's not because we are deliberately leaving faults there because we want to get it right. And Zed isn't looking hard to find faults. But they see it through a different lens. We incline to see things through a neurotypical lens and Zed sees the conversations through an autistic person's lens. And sort of things that we didn't pick up on were when we first opened having after Covid, we all remember there was hand sanitizer at the front. Everywhere you went. Of course, hand sanitisers have a strong smell. We didn't have that in a visual story. So Zed pointed that out that you didn't have that. Well, actually. Wow. Of course it's important because smells are really important. So these are the things that we can easily miss and we can put those in.
David Jones: So it's having critical friends who can, who are willing to help you makes your offer so much richer. And what we sometimes can forget is actually as a young person, giving a young person a voice that is listened to by adults and then is implemented is really a powerful thing. I can't think when I was at school that at any time, because I was thinking about this, related to this question coming up. I was thinking at any time in my school when I was at school. Did an adult ever take on board something I had suggested and do something with it? And I couldn't think of one occasion.
David Jones: Here's this young person who has influenced people not just in the uk, not just in Europe, but in America as well, who has raised their voice and taken that platform and has helped us all to be stronger. And there will be people who will benefit from that, who we will never know. And that's the real powerful part of it.
Paul Marden: How do you follow that question? So, as part of my work with kids in museums, we talk a lot about young trustees. So how do you give people a voice? Well, one way that you give them a voice is that you make them a trustee and then they can directly influence the work that you do within your organisation. Have any of you thought about doing that as part of. Do you have an individual board or a board of the Science Museum Group?
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: We don't have young people on our board, but we've recently opened two new galleries and at the start of the project several years ago, we identified some key priority audiences recognising that our collections are image and sound technologies, which automatically means that people who are D, deaf or partially sighted aren't able to access in the same way that others can neurodiverse as well. And then young people, because Bradford is one of the youngest cities in the country. So to your question, we set up a young person's panel who worked with us right the way through the project and were involved with every stage, including working with designers, briefing designers. And if any of you go to the galleries, I will point out, I can point out directly two areas that they were particularly interested in. One is sustainability. So there's a very.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: There's an area up gallery on the fifth floor which is all about sustainability. And they drove the content for all of that, including making the film that's there about recycling televisions. And the other area is you will find a big pool of blood on the floor in one of the galleries. And we have an object which is a set of fangs that were worn by Christopher lee in the 1958 film Dracula. And this is pre computer graphics generation. And so there's a little vial that used to sit in the roof of his mouth and at the appropriate, filled with red dye. And at the appropriate time he used his tongue to press on the vial and the blood would come tripping out the fangs and it's a tiny object and you would normally walk past and not even notice.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: And the young people's panel just said, well, you just need blood all over the floor to the design team and they said, that's a really good idea and you won't miss it on the galleries. So they bring something that we wouldn't have had otherwise, that the interpretation is that gallery is absolutely influenced by those young people.
Paul Marden: Wonderful, wonderful. We have talked for quite some considerable time and the conference has got quieter and quieter as everyone has headed home. So I think it's time for us to wrap up. I've got one question for each of you. A key takeaway from your table talks that you were at today or the keynote that you heard.
Natalie Whitehead: Nicest one, actually, just. Just recently, we had a bit of a brainwave moment about how this is not entirely relevant to the discussion we just had, but about how to get people into your centre when it's sunny, which is a perpetual problem. And it's something because we haven't actually created our centre yet. We're trying to do that. So I'm picking everyone's brains and trying to understand how to do that. We kind of came to different ideas and thinking about something sunny. Only activities, programming or exhibits such as, you know, pinhole cameras or. Yeah. Finding creative solutions to unusual challenges like sunny day problems. That was something that stuck out to me.
Paul Marden: That's very interesting. Yeah, absolutely. We're doing some research at the moment, talking to people, because there's a lot of talk within the sector about the impact of weather apps and how one cloudy day symbol on the BBC could ruin or. Or in your case, make an attractions day by filling it or emptying it. Sharon, your key takeaway from today?
Shaaron Leverment: Well, it's about collective power. We had a roundtable event last week at the House of Commons, which is great, and I think we're sort of quite high on energy and feeling like a real collective. And a number of people have been coming up talking about how much we can do greater together. And I think for now, that's just, you know, I mean, it's the reason that we're here asdc, as a membership organisation. So at the moment that. That is definitely still sort of resonating in terms of how we do need to, you know, we're not working in competition with each other, we're not just learning from each other, but we can be so much greater together. So that's currently my take home from today on the conversations I've been having.
Paul Marden: Excellent. Jo.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: Mine goes back to the table that were both on first and the point that was made. So we, like many organisations, probably will be if not having one, but will be talking about either a sustainability policy or a net zero policy. Some of us might also be talking about AI policy, but I've not seen the two, not thought about the two and the implications of the connections between those two. And I will be taking that away to talk to some of my colleagues about not seeing them in isolation, but very much influencing each other.
Paul Marden:Excellent, Stephen.
Stephen Breslin: My key takeaway is that quantum is difficult.
Paul Marden: Oh, now I missed that.
Stephen Breslin: And difficult to explain. But the possibilities and the potential for it to transform just about every aspect of our life means that we have to talk about it and find an engaging way to talk about it. And I think it's whacky enough to be really interesting even if you don't understand it, which let's face it, most of us never will understand it. But if we start to imagine a world where quantum computing is everywhere, then that gets quite interesting.
Paul Marden: That is interesting, isn't it? I mean I'm a computer scientist by training originally and I do not understand the subject at all. So you know, how does the average Joe get their head around it? It's such a mind blowing subject, you.
Stephen Breslin: Know, I think that's okay. I don't think that most of us need to understand it, but we do have to understand the implications of it, positive and negative. Yeah, I mean it could be. We could start to model biological systems in more detail and accuracy that we've never been able to do before. And through that create new drugs and treatments for chronic terminal diseases like cancer. And that's worth getting excited about.
Paul Marden: And it is International year of Quantum Computing, is it not? So we should be figuring out ways to communicate that, shouldn't we, David?
David Jones: Can I just take you back to quite an earlier question before I answer that? Of course you can, because were talking about AI earlier and it got me thinking. The conversation didn't quite come round our way. But obviously I bring in different communities into the centre at different times to be exposed to. One of the things we've got is a spotlight day. We work with often the local universities. This day Sunderland University had some robotic dogs, really expensive robotic dogs that they were in. So this is AI reality. Freya, one of the young people that I'm involved with, who's involved with even Chronicle Sunshine Fund came in. Freya's partially sighted and walks with a stick and she got really engrossed with talking to the scientists who were there, real scientists speaking to it as a young person.
David Jones: And the scientist was explaining that they're actually looking to train these robotic dogs to become guide dogs. Now. This was very real for her because she's likely to need a guide dog later in life. And these scientists, we're actually working on this now. We can get it that the guide dog can take you to Tesco's. You tell it to take you to Tesco's, it will take you to Tesco's. But the technology isn't quite there completely to safely make sure you can get across the road on all occasions. And were working on it now. She was really excited and she told me this really excitedly because she can see how this AI can have a really positive step in her life.
David Jones: So again, to go back to the question that you set there, the bit that struck me when were listening to Kieran's speech was the message that sometimes gets lost, which is the power of working with communities long term. So we're talking about legacy, we're talking about when this finishes, actually Bradford continuing to gain from the conversations and the young people's conversations and moving it forward. And that's one of the things as a science sector we've got to do, is not leave communities to the table and throw them off the edge. It's to take them with us and turn that way to enhance our offer. So that's what I would say.
Paul Marden: Wow. David, thank you for that. Thank you all for joining me. It's been a wonderful conversation, hasn't it? I always measure these things based on whether I've lost track of time and I very much lost track of time today. And that usually is correlated with a good conversation, isn't it? So thank you ever so much. I look forward to us coming back together again next year and doing this once more.
Jo Quinton-Tulloch: Excellent. Of course.
Paul Marden: Thank you. I thought I'd slip that right in there.
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Skip the Queue is brought to you by Crowd Convert, who provide attractions with the tools and expertise to create world class digital interactions. Very simply, CrowdConvert is here to rehumanise commerce. Today's episode was written by me, editing was by Steve Folland and production was by Wenalyn Dionaldo, Sami Entwistle and Emily Burrows from Plaster. Thanks for listening and see you next week.