Present: JC, Isabel, Stanley, Crystal, Rimi, Rhona, Imogen, Amy, Sara
Our first meeting of the year happened this past Sunday! Everyone was excited to be back, especially for a long fun workshop format meeting where we familiarised ourselves with our newly funded #UnsungHeroines activity. Also, we welcomed a brand new ScienceGrrl to the fold – Rimi comes from a physics background but was keen to hone her skills in chromatography with all of us anyways.
We started off with a regular meeting before we tackled our activity – this is what we discussed:
1, Evaluation of #elfonascienceshelf Twitter advent calendar. This increased our number of followers, our follower interaction and kept us visible daily. To continue this trend we have decided to try to retweet more items daily to keep up visibility, and to add users to the ScienceGrrl Glasgow account. We also discussed doing a similar Twitter series, with ideas being an Easter egg lab hunt and anniversaries of scientists a la Google, perhaps monthly with 12 female scientists in a series. This could be launched on International Womens Day which falls on Thursday March 8th this year. Anniversary dates could be birthdays, deaths or dates of important discoveries/awards. Amy helpfully has a Pinterest board of “Obscure women in science” to help us choose women to tweet about! Following on from this, we also talked about whether or not we could do something with more current researchers, maybe up and coming female scientists? Identifying participants would be harder, but we could maybe look at early career grants (from Loreal, Wellcome Trust etc)?
2, 2018 events.
GirlGuides – This could be a good starting activity practice. Both Rhona and Sara have GG contacts to follow up with, the only issue being that Guides schedules usually are planned months ahead of time, with sessions being booked up fast. If we are successfully invited to a session, our suggested format would be activity stations for groups to circulate with a “treasure hunt” quiz for participants to take along, assessing their engagement as part of our feedback for the event. We could also branch out with visits to Rainbows, Brownies and scouts but would need to tailor activities to the different ages.
MoSSFest (Middle of Scotland Science Festival) – As the location changes and is still not known for 2018 (event is usually in October) we have tabled the decision to attend for a future meeting.
Midlothian Science Festival – Last year our stall had a lot of visitors so we would like to go back this year with our new activity. Amy and Imogen are running point on organising our attendance.
University of Glasgow Vet School Rodeo – This will take place in the spring, probably in April. Sara will find out exactly when it will be and organise attendance.
School visits – Oakgrove Primary @ St Georges Cross are keen for visitors during their Science Week this term. Sara will find out exact dates, but attendance could be problematic due to visits being during the working week.
Maryhill Integration Network – We have suggested organising visits during family nights (held weekly). We need a contact, but hopefully once we have that we can arrange a drop-in. As these nights occur weekly and require less organisation than bigger events, it’s a nice contrast to what we normally do and can perhaps be organised on shorter notice (similar to Meet the Expert sessions at the Glasgow Science Centre) and during periods with less public engagement events happening.
Gibson Street Party – ScienceGrrl Glasgow attended this event two years ago but it seems it is no longer funded to take place. We’ll keep an eye open for other street party opportunities however, as they can offer a different audience and take us to different areas, like getting invited to take part in an event in Govan last summer.
Edinburgh Science Festival – The deadline for the festival has passed, but we have a possible lead on involvement by applying to develop a new activity. Amy will follow-up.
3, BCS grant spending. Our CFO/treasurer Isabel has ordered our first batch of goods for #UnsungHeroines and with money to spare we decided to add some more items to our shopping list. To enhance our visibility at events we are ordering team t-shirt with the ScienceGrrl Glasgow logo (of course with one tiny size for Stan!) and also freebies to hand out (pens/pencils with logo, badges with logo, #UnsungHeroines & Science is for Everyone slogan) + more postcards, posters and roller banners. For the #UnsungHeroines activity we are ordering cocktail sticks (or pegs and twine), thicker filter paper, Petri dishes, more molecule building kits (with colour guide), nail polish remover and development containers (individual/trough). We also decided to get some prizes for events where we decide to take a quiz, ideas being microscopes, Giant Microbes Malaria and DNA models.
Isabel will look into when/how we need to justify our budget expenditure to the BCS.
4, Design work. Isabel has received quotes for orders of posters, roller banners and postcards and Rhona will assist with designing these. We decided on roller banners with our logo and all contact info, one with the slogan “Science is for Everyone” and perhaps one advertising #UnsungHeroines, with a background of Unsung Heroines photos (similar to postcard design). Posters (2xA1, 2xA2) will be of Unsung Heroines Barbara “Babs” McClintock and Tu YouYou (designs scaling up from postcards in landscape). For our postcards we will keep the same designs but might pursue the idea of designing new cards with current female researchers.
4, #UnsungHeroines activity workshop. The BCS-funded #UnsungHeroines activity starts with an introductory chat about Tu YouYou’s discovery of artemisinin (read Isabels BCS blog for details) and her very thorough research into the science archives. This leads into information about molecules in the environment around us and a choice of the following activities:
- We have four essential oils (two isomers with different smells – lemongrass/menthol) which are “smellable” from drops on filter paper in labelled Petri dishes. These molecules can be discussed while building models with our molecule kits (changing isomers into each other etc).
- Extraction & chromatography starts of by spinach and gin being ground together with a pestle and mortar, yielding a green liquid with extracted chlorophyll which can be used for the chromatography stage. To prepare the chromatography, you make a starting line on filter paper (in pencil) and add a small drop of your prepared green liquid with a Pasteur pipette in a dot on the starting line. You can also pick different colour pens and add small dots along the line. To develop, you hang the filter paper in a container with nail polish remover. Developed filter paper with separated (according to size) chlorophyll components/molecules can then be taken away by all participants – or collected on a chromatography wall.
Next meeting February 18th at 1pm. Venue Saramago at CCA.