Public engagement

A major goal of the ORION project was to open a funding call that encouraged different stakeholders to come together and present new and innovate ways to make science more accessible and participatory. The overall aim of this funding call was to support long-term collaboration between unusual/different stakeholders.

Talking about pollution on a global level is important, but for communities, it is equally important to understand and discuss how pollution is affecting their local environment. Protecting areas of local natural beauty is crucial in local communities, but this is difficult to achieve if people don’t know about the environmental threats that their local area faces. Klára Vaculíková from Brno University technology designed a project to engage school classes who helped to monitor levels of the water pollutant phosphorus in the Moravský kras which is a spectacular natural limestone feature to the north of Brno. This project was funded as part of a co-creation call from the ORION partner JCMM.

To help open science up to a wider audience, ORION organised a number of public dialogues in the UK, Sweden, Germany and the Czech Republic during 2019-2020. One purpose of the dialogues was to explore public attitudes to genome editing technology, which has revolutionized scientific research in the past decade and has the potential for broad societal impact. The dialogues also aimed to understand how to engage the public on disruptive technologies and how public engagement strategies could vary between countries. Information about the potential use of the technology has led to a wide variety of different opinions and reactions from the public, which are not always based on scientific fact. The empirical evidence gathered during the dialogues will provide the basis of future communications strategies within the ORION institutions.

Can art help to explain scientific concepts? During the course of the ORION project, artist Emilia Tikka designed an art piece to represent a possible future scenario where it was possible to prevent aging using genome editing. The art piece was produced by Tikka while she was on a residency with the ORION partner, the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine in Berlin. There she spent time in a molecular biology lab and developed the concept for her art piece titled “ÆON - Trajectories of Longevity and CRISPR.”

If you think that building a sailing boat at a kindergarten in a small village of the South Moravian lowlands in Czech Republic is a nonsense, then you are wrong! It’s a part of the ORION partner JCMM’s EduSTEM (Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) programme, which aims to inspire the future generation of researchers and innovators.

The ORION partner Instituto de Salud Carlos III, ISCIII will grant three prizes of 10.000 € to Health Research Institutes in Spain that have excelled in implementing the RRI principles. The aim of the prize is to recognise, encourage, promote and disseminate best RRI institutional practice developed by Research Institutions on Health.

The MELTIC project “Ideas MELting pot for TIC and Health Science for Citzens in Small communities” coordinated by the ORION partner Carlos III National Health Institute, ISCIII , is the winner of the ORION call for Novel Co-creation Initiatives after competing against eleven other European project proposals. The project will improve the quality of life for EU citizens in small communities by co-creating and developing ICT health services with stakeholders.

What does the public think about the new genome editing technology CRISPR and how should we talk about it? The ORION project has organised public dialogues in the Czech Republic, Germany, Sweden and the UK to find out. The aim with the public dialogues was to discuss the risks and opportunities of this disruptive technology and identify any concerns the public might have.

In this Live Chat on 3 September, Dr Emma Harris, of MDC and Dr Ann Grand, from Wellcome Trust discussed what Open Science is all about, why it's important and what are the concerns and expectations.

Join us to discuss Open Science, RRI and genomic medicine during ESOF 2020 - EuroScience Open Forum on 3 and 4September. The theme for ESOF 2020 is: “Freedom for science, science for freedom". Due to Covid-19, this year's ESOF is also open for online participation.