For the February 2025 Top Tips, Ecsite spoke with Robert Firmhofer. He is the Chief Executive Officer at Copernicus Science Centre - this year's host for #Ecsite2025.

Listening -

I listen to very diverse music. My favourite genres include jazz (from John Coltrane's hard bop to Hiromi Uehara), contemporary funk (live Vulfpeck performances keep me optimistic during dark winter months), baroque music (Bach, Haendel, Pergolesi), rap (Eminem, 50 Cent) and recently classical Argentinian tangos and milongas.

One of my most precious discoveries is Hania Rani, a Polish pianist, composer, and singer. She masterfully blends classical, jazz, and electronic music, inviting her listeners on an intellectual and emotional journey. Here you can find Hania Rani playing live from the royal courtyard of the Invalides in Paris.

Following my teenage son's recommendations, I also listen to American rapper Kendrick Lamar. “Not Like Us”, swept five Grammy awards at the ceremony earlier this year. This spectacular piece is a diss track directed at Canadian rapper Drake, part of a long-term feud between the two.

Reading –

After reading almost all the books of my favourite Canadian writer, Margareth Atwood, I dived into the world of William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy and emerged only to start my new near-future dystopian adventure with Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Klara and the Sun”. Klara, the protagonist and narrator, is a solar-powered AF(Artificial Friend) created as a human companion. Looking at the world from her perspective (can you imagine how important the sun is to her?) makes the reader pose some fundamental questions. As Anne Enright noted in the Guardian, the novel “contains a secret moral shift: an advance in technology that has changed people's sense of what it is to be human”.

Following –

It would be much easier to declare who I don’t follow. I haven’t developed the habit of closely following people and companies on social media. However, I try to be up-to-date by scrolling the news from our field on LinkedIn. And whom I certainly don’t follow? The billionaire and social media mogul who is running the United States.

Things keeping me up at night –

I have been increasingly worried by the growth of political extremism in Europe, the US and elsewhere, including my home country. What seemed to be a negligible margin not long ago is becoming mainstream, and what was hard to imagine has become a reality. Being part of the science centres and museums community – open, tolerant, rational and friendly - is a privilege nowadays. I can only hope that, as a field, we continue to be relevant in these challenging times.

Somewhere I’ve been recently -

I still vividly remember the Ecsite Directors Forum in Bristol. It was a fabulous meeting hosted in November last year by the excellent WeTheCourius. I was impressed and inspired by their commitment and dedication to net zero.

Somewhere I’m planning to go –

When writing this recommendation, I was preparing for my winter holidays in Kenya. My plans include obtaining an Advanced Open Water Diver PADI certificate and exploring the Watamu Marine National Park, which is famous for green turtles and abundant sea life. I hope to see Big Five in the Tsavo East National Park, visit a snake farm conducting excellent research and witness the snake milking, and stroll through Gedi Ruins, a medieval Swahili town abandoned in 17. Century, now buried in the lush vegetation of primaeval forest and inhabited solely by Sykes monkeys.

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