Science festival

A science festival is a festival that showcases science and technology with the same freshness and flair that would be expected from an arts or music festival. Events can be varied, including lectures, exhibitions, workshops, live demonstrations of experiments, guided tours, and panel discussions. There may also be events linking science to the arts or history, such as plays, dramatised readings, and musical productions. The core content is that of science and technology, but the style comes from the world of the arts.

The modern concept of a science festival comes from the city of Edinburgh in 1989. The choice of Glasgow as European Capital of Culture for 1990 took Edinburgh by surprise and stimulated it to rebrand itself as a city of science, building on the success of a series of big urban developments led by its Economic Development Department. A senior member of the development team, Ian Wall, proposed that Edinburgh should highlight its new image by complementing its world-famous autumn arts festival with a new type of spring event for which he coined the phrase 'science festival'. Reaction was mixed, with some organisations doubting whether science could be packaged in an arts format. Even so, the city put resources behind the idea, appointing a director and project team, and in April 1989 the first Edinburgh International Science Festival took place.

Edinburgh's success led to the development of science festivals in many other parts of the world. The British Science Association restructured its annual meeting, originally established in 1831 as a discussion forum for scientists, to turn it into the British Science Festival of today. The town of Cheltenham—famous for its jazz, music, and literature festivals— added science to its portfolio with the creation of the Cheltenham Science Festival in 2002.

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