Monday

How do we bring music and astronomy together in an event that also engages primary school pupils? By making musical waves for this year’s on-line Science Discovery Day at the University of St Andrews. Where in previous years we gave workshops in schools in the weeks leading up to an annual science festival on campus, this year we had to move on-line because of the on-going pandemic. Building upon our experience combining art and science for public engagement within the Shine team, we developed a workshop aimed at P6/7 level that invited pupils to think about sound, waves, light and stars. This workshop ran completely on-line and was designed for pupils to take part in from their own devices at home (or from the school class room if they were in the school building). The key concepts of the workshop were echoed in music demonstration videos and a 1-hour remotely recorded Musical Waves concert. During the concert we showed science videos, music demonstrations and performances, and premiered a specially for this occasion commissioned piece for mono audio and Ruben’s Tube. We included the questions sent to us by the pupils after participating in the workshops, and answered these in the narrative of the concert.

In this talk I will give an overview of our project, and thoughts on what worked well and what could be improved. Given the positive feedback from teachers and pupils we are now looking forward to explore this format further in collaboration with primary school teachers, and to increase the options for pupils to contribute to the concert activity. Although we of course hope that we can go back to live-concerts and in-classroom activities soon, we are also interested in exploring the possibilities for remote engagement with more rural communities.