These days science centres and museums are more and more called upon to act as public fora, places where visitors can meet and talk about important issues such as climate change, environmental protection, public health and new research areas such as nanotechnology. How can they best fulfil this role as public forum and efficiently facilitate the public dialogue about important social and scientific developments?

In this workshop you will analyse your own organisation's position and efforts as a public forum, critically evaluate outcomes and make plans for further actions in strengthening your role as supporter of public dialogue. To get you started with the workshop, speakers will first share our their own thoughts and experiences gained through EU project Synenergene. We will then invite you to use a hands-on tool called a ‘translearning canvas’ to describe and better understand your own particular (potential) role in this process. We will end with a wrap-up plenary discussion.

We’d like to collect the canvasses at the end of the session and analyse outcomes, to produce a feedback paper based on this data.