How can you communicate science on a boat? SciCom-Special #5 with Babette Jochum from the MS Wissenschaft.

Introduction to Kaleidoscience

0:00Hi and welcome to Kaleidoscience. You are listening to our winter special where we are taking a look at science communication. During December we'll have special episodes on Sundays where we talk to fellow science communicators about their medium and experience. In January we'll go back to our schedule and we will take a look at the research behind science communication. This episode is hosted by Imogen Hüsing and Luffy Kühner. So sit back, relax and enjoy this week's episode.

0:32As you will have noticed there wasn't a regular upload last week and there won't be one this week. We are currently enjoying a little winter break until the 15th of January. Even though there are no regular episodes we are still working on our winter special where we talk to fellow science communicators. So please enjoy those episodes until our regular scheduled program is back. Apart from that we wish you a Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and Happy Holidays to everybody else and a Happy New Year.

MS Wissenschaft Introduction

1:07Hello and welcome to our new episode. We've probably all been to a museum in our life but have you ever been to a scientific exhibition on a boat? Today we're going to talk about the MS Wissenschaft. The MS Wissenschaft is a boat which has a new scientific exhibition every year introducing a scientific topic interactively, visiting often more than 30 cities in Germany and some in Austria. Today we're talking to Babette Juchum who is the project lead at the MS Wissenschaft with a previous hands-on experiences as a project manager.

1:45Before she joined the MS Wissenschaft, she worked on many other projects at Wissenschaft im Dialog. Babette has a background in science journalism and the history of science and technology. Welcome and thank you for being here. Thank you for the invite. And as always, we will start with our brief welcome game, introduction game. For this, I will start three sentences and it is your task to finish them.

2:15So the first sentence is, as a kid, I always wanted to be... An author. Nice. Yeah. Any specific genres?

2:27Like adventure stories. Yeah. Cool.

2:35The next sentence is, currently I'm most fascinated by? By the brave scientists in America who are like really keeping up their work, even though they are pretty much under pressure. I think that's really brave and special and needed work they are doing now. So, yeah. I'm following this really closely. Really cool. Yeah.

3:05It's a really dire situation over there for scientists. Yeah, we've also talked to some people in different episodes who, for example, avoided a conference they actually wanted to go to because they did not feel safe visiting that conference, unfortunately. Yeah, it's crazy. I never expected it to happen so fast. Like it can be so worse, so bad, so fast. It's really, yeah, terrifying. Then let's go into the last sentence.

3:40If I was an emoji, I would be?

3:44I think I would want to be the exploding head emoji because I always really like the moments in my work when I have like those exploding head feeling, when I learn something new or when I meet people that are like so into their work that they are like giving all the, yeah, all their time and everything into that work. And yeah, I'm really amazed by that.

4:16So exploding head moments are my favorite moments.

MS Wissenschaft Project

4:21So can you tell us a little bit more about the MS Wissenschaft? Yeah, so the MS Wissenschaft is an inland cargo ship. So before we had the exhibitions on that ship, it basically took around like stones or coal or stuff like that. So it was really just a normal inland cargo ship. And since 2002 and now two and since 2003, we are involved.

4:58It's, yeah, carrying around the exhibition once a year. The exhibition is special because it's always should be interactive. And the exhibits come from scientific institutions. So it's not like that we are doing the research about the exhibits that are on board, but we are lending them from scientific institutions. So everything we show on board is really actual research that is happening like right now.

5:34And yeah, once the exhibition is on board, we are touring through Germany and also Austria usually for five months per year. And the exhibition is for free. So everybody can come on board and see the exhibition. And yeah, and it's the MS Wissenschaft is traveling on behalf of the Federal Ministry of Research, Technology and Space.

6:04And we as Wissenschaft im Dialog, we are doing this, yeah, since 2003, we're doing like the project management around it. Very cool. And what brought you to the MS Wissenschaft? When I started my, when I started my master's, I knew that I need an apprenticeship for this master's and I stumbled upon the MS Wissenschaft.

6:35And so I found Wissenschaft im Dialog and I thought, okay, maybe I will just try to work at Wissenschaft im Dialog and I will get to MS Wissenschaft. But that was 2015. And then it took me a few years of working in this different projects and whatever to finally arrive to the MS Wissenschaft like one and a half year ago. And since October, I'm now the project lead. So in the end, I arrived where I wanted to arrive, but it took some time.

7:09But yeah, a nice time in other projects with different experiences. But that's so cool that you like found this project, wanted to work on that project and then like it worked out in the end. Finally, yeah. Even though it took me some time, but yeah. Really cool. And you already touched upon that. Those are like exhibition pieces from like scientific institutions and stuff.

Planning Exhibitions

7:38How do you like decide on the topic in the first place? And how do you then plan these exhibitions out so that everything fits on the boat and that you can like put the things because I know a lot of research things are very sensitive onto this boat. Yeah. So there are many different people and institutions part of this project and of this process.

8:08So the topic of the exhibition, that's not us who are deciding on this, but it's the ministry like this federal ministry of research. And they are always doing a campaign, which is called the science year. And every year there's a different like science year topic. And our exhibition on board is always like connected to this science year topic. So once the ministry told us the topic, we are doing a lot of research on institutions

8:43who are working in this field, like scientific institutions who are working in this field. And we are working out like a call for exhibits. And then we send it like to those institutions and to like many more institutions, like in a big, yeah, sending out process. And then they can submit exhibit ideas. They have like three months to submit their exhibit ideas.

9:15And then we have a selection meeting where we are together with the ministry and with an expert advisory board. And then we like look through all the ideas that were handed in and we choose the exhibits that we want to have on board. And then we also have an exhibition agency. They are also working together with us. And then we are telling like the scientific institutions, okay, you're in, we took your

9:48exhibit. And then we, together with the exhibition agency, we help the research institute like to build their exhibit so they can like deliver it to the ship when the exhibition is built. And the exhibition agency works with us together, like on a big framework, like on the, um, all over design concept on the storytelling, um, on maybe topics that are still, that should

10:19be told, but that are maybe missing, um, from the exhibits that were handed in. So we also develop own, our own, um, exhibits and yeah, this all together makes the exhibition in the end. And that's very cool. So when you, you don't approach the institutions, but the institutions approach you. Yeah. Yeah. They are like, they want to participate. They're like, we're doing something cool.

10:50Yeah. Yeah. Feature us. So they hand in the idea and then, yeah, we, we usually get like double the, the double the ideas we can take, you know, um, so half of the institutions we can tell, okay, you are on board. Quite literally. Yeah. Um, and, uh, yeah, then it's, of course, often we have institutions on board who never

11:21did an exhibit before. So for them, it's also a travel to, um, think about, okay, what is a good exhibit and what is the way we can present our research in an exhibit and also in an interactive exhibit. We always want to be everything to be, yeah, like interactive. We maybe with like some gamification or some hands-on stuff where you can touch, feel, hear something.

11:51So, um, yeah, it's really a process we are going through with those, um, scientific institutions from like basically October until, um, end of April when the exhibition is built. You already answered the question that I had. I just wanted to ask, what is the timeframe? Like when do you start? And yeah, so the exhibition, um, uh, the, the ship starts, um, it's, um, journey around

12:21April then, right? No, it's like, um, usually begin or middle of May. Ah, okay. But it takes like two weeks to build the exhibition. So the, um, institutions need to get the exhibits ready until like end of April to deliver it to the ship to like have it built in the exhibition. Okay.

Exhibition Experience

12:42Cool.

Exhibition Experience

12:42And what do you enjoy the most about doing exhibitions specifically on a boat?

12:50Um, it's a very special place. Like even for me since I'm already since, yeah, one and a half year now, um, quite often on the boat, it's still, I really like to arrive there and to just like enter the boat. And it's just a nice feeling because it's such a different place. Um, um, I really liked the room of the, like the cargo room downstairs. Um, you have to like, uh, go down some stairs from the deck.

13:21And when you start going down the stairs, you don't see the cargo room directly, but you first have to go down some stairs and then it opens you like the view of the, um, exhibition. It's usually much bigger than you think when you see the ship from the outside. So it's always like, you have this surprise moment of like, wow, this is all like in here. I didn't expect that. Um, and it's just a really good room for an exhibition because it's, um, it's, yeah, you

13:58know, it has no windows and it's just like this long, um, yeah, this long closed room. You can have a lot of different designs in there. It offers a lot of good space. Um, and it's also nice because you don't, you know, if you always would do exhibitions in another when venue, you would always have so many opportunities of how whatever design this and that, and we always just have this same room.

14:30We can fix different, um, different exhibitions in there, but it's always the same room we deal with. And that also makes it easy. And for us as a team, we sometimes get to travel a bit on the boat or we can sleep on the boat when the, we are there for like special, yeah, special happenings. That's also nice. I can also imagine that, uh, it's quite unique, uh, to have an exhibition that travels through like big parts of, uh, Germany and also Austria because most exhibitions are stationary, right?

15:07Yeah. That's like, um, actually I forgot the most important part about it. That's true. So, um, we can reach a lot of places that are not even reached by trains. Maybe, you know, they, there has to be a river or a kennel, of course, but, um, we can reach so many cities or towns, um, or also small towns that don't have a museum around that maybe don't have a research institute around. And we just can carry the science communication there, bring it to the people.

15:39And, um, um, a lot of people also come because they just are like interested in the boat and then they arrive there and then they see like the exhibition and the topic and then they take the science communication with them, even though they didn't, um, yeah, wanted to do it in the first place. So I think that's also nice.

16:03I think all of this sounds very good, but do you also face like challenges doing an exhibition on a boat? I mean, you also already touched on the fact that it's always only one room. There's no way to like make this bigger, for example. Yeah, and also the room has like a, like, um, design or maybe the layout of the room is not really the usual exhibition layout because you cannot do, um, like a circuit.

16:36You usually, you have like a circuit in exhibitions where you just do the round when you work, walk through there. And that's not possible in our boat because it's just not wide enough, the room. Um, so usually we have to plan the exhibition that way that the people come and go, um, the same way. Um, that's like something that is sometimes a bit challenging. Um, and we also don't have the, um, the usual delivery entrance, um, for, for like taking

17:06the exhibits into the exhibition. So they all have to be taken on board by the crane. Um, so they have to be packed, especially so that the crane can like take it. And, um, yeah, that's also a bit, a bit challenging. Um, but besides this, I think it's, I think it has more advantages than disadvantages. And you already touched on the fact that the boat can go places, um, for example, trains

17:40might not go. How do you like make up the iterary? So like, how do you plan on where to go with the boat? Um, like we try to vary the route every year and we take into account really different, um, a lot of different, um, facts. So, um, we think about where, maybe where haven't we been in the last years. So we try to like be everywhere every few years, um, everywhere we can go.

18:13I will come to this, uh, later and we take into account like the, um, school holiday timing. So when, uh, where like the summer holidays, so a lot of, um, schools can come, um, on board. And we also look where, um, maybe many research institutes are located who are like working on this special topic that we are like, um, having on board in that year. Um, yeah. And then we get invited often by cities or towns.

18:45Then we try it, then we just see if we can make it possible to visit them. So, yeah, it's always like a big puzzle to, uh, to create the route. Thank you, Manny. But we are also limited. That's what I also wanted to say. Um, where we can go, like for example, the Elbe, um, which is like the main river in Eastern Germany, usually doesn't have enough water, um, in May when we start for a cargo.

19:15Like ours since a few years, um, it doesn't have enough water anymore. So we cannot go, um, on the Elbe anymore, which is really limiting our visit in Eastern Germany.

19:28Does it get any more water during the year or is it basically a permanent status? It's like a really short time in the year when we could go on the Elbe. It's like March and April, but then the exhibition is not ready yet. So, yeah. Okay. But this year we are trying to be more in Eastern Germany and we are traveling a lot through Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, going like up to, um, like the East Baltic Sea and, yeah, visiting a lot of towns on the way.

Target Audience and Demographics

20:02Cool.

Target Audience and Demographics

20:02Um, what is your target audience and how do different demographics react to the MS Wissenschaft? Um, we designed the content for everybody older than 12 years old because we think that these complex topics that we want to put into exhibits on board, um, are also, are, if they are understandable for a 12 year old, they are also understandable for an adult who never

20:33like heard from the topic. And we also want to reach a lot of, um, schools. So, and we also reaching a lot of schools. Um, but besides that, um, we also reach a lot of families like in school holidays and summer holidays, a lot of families are on board. We also reach a lot of, um, retirees, maybe some like, um, clubs who are connected to the topic on board, students. So I think it's really wide the, um, like the variety of people we reach.

21:08Yeah. Do you notice that maybe some demographics are maybe in the beginning more interested in the boat itself or in general more interested in the boat itself? And some really actually directly come for the exhibitions. Um, it's like families and retirees, like children, some children are really into boats. So they come there. So the families come because they can come on to, to see the boat. Um, and, uh, yeah.

21:39And also some like retirees who are just always scanning which boat is in my city. Um, where can I go or maybe in the area and then they come. So, and we have also a lot of people who are coming every year, which is really nice. Like do we have some cities we are usually visiting nearly every year? Um, and there, the people are coming often. That's nice. Yeah. That's very nice. Yeah. Probably everything along the Rhine is easy or easier for you to access.

22:12Yeah, that's true. Yeah, that's true.

22:15And also Bonn, we are usually visiting Bonn because part of the like research ministry is also located in Bonn. So that's a factor. Yeah. Makes sense. Um, so what is something interesting you personally have learned doing science communication? This doesn't need to be necessarily like a scientific fact. It can also be related to media or something.

22:45I think what I really learned through the years, but also now, especially with the MS Wissenschaft is that you reach people the best if they just have fun. Um, you know, our approach with the MS Wissenschaft is now that people just have a good time when they come on board so they can eat an ice cream in our like a bistro area. They can maybe have some gamification so they can play some games on board.

23:17Um, they can just see the ship. They can wander around the exhibition and see what they like. They can maybe just be, um, like amazed by the design or whatever. So it's not that we are there to tell them here is a place where you need to learn something. It's more, we are happy if they come on board and, um, after that they go home and they think like, yeah, that was a really good afternoon. Like I was, I had a good time. Um, I had a coffee, I was on a boat and maybe, um, like as a bonus.

23:53They even learned something or they maybe just got a little bit of the spark of, wow, research is really like special and really interesting. And that's already enough. So that's like an approach I needed to learn. Like it took me a lot of years to get there, that it's really okay if people just have a good time when they, um, had like contact with like a science communication format.

24:25I think that's a really good approach because as we all know, forcing people into learning is not going to be the solution. Yeah. So I think it's a very, very, very good and nice approach to this. It doesn't work in school. Why should it work in the free time? Yeah. Yeah, that's true. Um, do you consume, um, science communication yourself outside from setting up the MS Wissenschafts?

24:56And if so, what is your preferred science communication media to consume? Um, I like to, um, watch my ThinkX. Yeah. Do you know it? It's like from Mighty Nguyen Kim, um, like the TV format on ZDF. And I think she has a really, really good approach to, to like topics that are, that are discussed in society and she's really taking like the scientific effects around it and she's explaining

25:31it in a really good way. And it's also like, you also watch it and you have a good time. It's funny and it's entertaining. And yeah, I think she's doing a really, really good job. And I learned a lot with her. I love the iced tea that they, uh, sweetened with Globuli. I thought that was ingenious. Yeah, it was really fun.

25:57Yeah, I feel like this also in parts already answers the next question. If you have any recommendation for science communication formats that people could also check out. Yeah, I always would recommend her. She's also doing documentaries for Terra X. Um, she's, she just did one about cooking, like the chemistry about cooking. And I, I, and generally I love like to watch shows about like cooking and food. And when people are like traveling around the world and just eating lots of food, I love

26:30to watch that. Um, and, um, she did like the traveling and eating part, but also with like the, um, some scientific explanations about, um, like what is the best French fries and what is, um, like the chemistry of water doing, um, to like create the best French fries. And yeah, I really loved that approach. That's very cool. We will link that in the show notes. I think this might be more accessible to German speaking listeners, but that's true.

27:04I think that's okay. And then do you have anything we have not yet talked about that you feel like that you would like to share about the topic of MS Wissenschaft or personally, or in any way that we have not covered? Um, I just can, maybe I can use the time just to tell the people that they are always welcome to come on board. Usually in March, we, um, we tell our new tour.

27:39So, because then like everything is like fixed where we can stop and, um, which Harbor, like every Harbor, like gave us the permission. Um, so, um, then we can like tell about our new tour and we usually start in May in Berlin, um, in beginning of May this year. Um, I don't have the exact date yet, but more or less, and yeah, it's for free. You can, as I told you, you can just come on board and have a good time and eat an ice cream

28:10or have a coffee and, um, this. So, yeah, I just want to invite everybody to come and visit us. And, um, firstly, you said the exhibitions, like the descriptions are also available in English. So if you think now, oh, this might not be for me, I don't speak German fluently, for example, um, people can read up on it in English. Yeah. So we have the, um, um, all the texts about the exhibits, like in a booklet, you can land

28:46it, um, like at the information desk when you arrive. And we also have an audio guide and this is also the audio guides also available in English. Um, and lastly, um, where can people, so when people now think I really want to visit the MS Wissenschaft, um, what do they present next year? Can you provide us the link so we can put it in the show notes so they can be the first people to know about the next exhibition and where they can see it?

29:17Sure. So we are on Instagram, um, MS Wissenschaft, like, uh, everything like, uh, small and one word. Um, so follow us and, um, on our website, like ms-wissenschaft.de, um, you can also find all the information. Like right now, the information is still about the, um, exhibition that was on board this year. Um, and, um, then we do like a kind of a tiny relaunch of the website, um, also around March

29:51when we start our communication for the new, um, exhibition and then you can find everything about the new topic, which will be medicine of the future. Oh, interesting. Yeah. Then, thank you so much for talking to us today and introducing MS Wissenschaft to us. Thank you. It was nice to be here. This was Kaleidoscience. We hope that you enjoyed this episode and we would love to have your feedback.

30:23You can rate our podcast and give us feedback on our Instagram account. Have a great week and you'll hear from us again in two weeks. This episode was hosted by Imogen Hüsing and Sophie Kühne. Produced by Imogen Hüsing, Clara Kühne, Sophie Kühne, Sönke Löw and Elisa Palme. The music is from Jan-Lukas Schröder and the logo is from Annika Richter.