DOORS Project pilot - Digital Audience Analysis: Audience Segmentation Based on Motivation - What motivation drives our audience to visit us and to use our digital museum offers? Thanks to funding from the EU project DOORS (Digital incubator fOR muSeums), Neanderthal Museum (Germany) is conducting a local study on visitor and user motivation. With guidance from The Audience Agency (UK) and within three consecutive cross-department workshops, eight motivation segments were defined for our museum’s audience. By analyzing the tracking data of the museum’s website and conducting online and onsite surveys, we gained new knowledge about various relevant motivations for our audience to visit us and use our digital services and content. We created new guidelines for similar research and more motivating analog and digital offers based on our research outcomes.

Cascading Debates, from local perspectives to global decision-makers - With this format, we want to create cycles of debate by cascading perspectives - challenges, insights, knowledge, questions and recommendations for action - from local communities into structured discussions with multiple stakeholders. Those perspectives are then transported into higher-level discussions at the Falling Walls Science Summit. Afterwards, feedback loops take expert thoughts back into communities and create calls for action on global challenges. We encourage science engagement professionals, museums and other public spaces to join our Cascading Debates initiative.

SECURE - Researchers are the heart of research and are fundamental contributors to knowledge economies in Europe. The Sustainable Careers for Researcher Empowerment (SECURE) project aims to address the challenges they face in their careers by creating, trialling, implementing, and mainstreaming a common Research Career Framework. This will support organisations in the recruitment, employment, training, development, progression, and mobility of researchers with the aim of improving research careers and reducing career precarity.

OTTER - With proven positive cognitive, affective, interpersonal, and behavioural effects, out-of-school educational settings such as outdoor activities, field trips, museums, scientific centres, community settings, and enhanced digital learning have the potential to increase young people’s interest in scientific topics and STEAM. OTTER is developing Education Outside the Classroom (EOC) methods and pedagogies and investigating how EOC can help improve the acquisition of scientific knowledge and transferable skills in students, specifically in the field of environmental sustainability. Its outputs? A specific EOC programme (“Labs”) to teach STEAM subjects, with a specific focus on plastic waste and recycling, a Hub to connect experts, and accreditation guidelines.

STE(A)M Learning Ecologies (SLEs) project - STE(A)M Learning Ecologies is an EU-funded project (Horizon Europe) developing engaging open schooling-enabled science learning paths for all in learning continuums of formal and informal learning environments that are also focusing on inclusiveness.

Islands in the Sea of Knowledge - The idea behind the project is to enable equal STEM education opportunities for children and youth in remote island communities with limited access to science centres and museums. The activities of the project vary, from 'train the trainers', to developing new innovative education tools and working with children and youth to organizing public events in local communities. Hopefully, this project showcase presentation will inspire and encourage some participants to empower similar remote communities in their countries.

Meet the European Citizen Science - Organizations representing a wide diversity of stakeholders have joined forces to create the capacity, structure, and connections to widen and strengthen the European citizen science community and establish citizen science as a recognized, promoted and funded approach. The four-year EU-funded project European Citizen Science will create capacity-building opportunities, provide open collaborative spaces where citizen scientists can familiarise themselves with open science principles, engage public libraries to attract underrepresented publics, as well as provide support to countries and regions which lack citizen science networks, platforms and policy recognition.

SciCultureD - In a world of 'wicked problems' that require multi-layered solutions, co-creation between disciplines emerges as an essential step to find solutions fitting to all levels of society. SciCultureD is an Erasmus+ project trying to envision solutions to society's pressing issues, specially the climate crisis and its social and ethical implications, through a transdisciplinary and collaborative approach. Design Thinking and creative pedagogies have been used in SciCultureD to design a variety of tools and training opportunities, such as a transnational 5-day course that teach participants to listen, communicate and collaborate in a multi-cultural and multi-skilled environment, and the CourseKit, a playful tool for educators and course developers to equip students with the tools to face the needs of the world (be it professional, social or personal).