“Beyond the Lab: The DIY Science Revolution” is a pan-European exhibition that shows how ordinary people are harnessing science in all sorts of ways. The exhibition will be touring Europe in the next two years.

When we, the Sparks project partners, reflected about rethinking innovation together, we were imagining new formats and new ideas for having conversations between citizens and scientists, between policy makers and education professionals… in few words, we wanted to contribute to a closer, engaging and different way of approaching different aspects of science. It is part of what RRI aims to.

The intersection of technology, health and medicine is a crossing point that creates a new meeting space, where not only researchers, industry and technologists come together, but citizens as well. Their participation in these new areas brings a breathtaking array of possibilities: creativity, societal interests, participation and collaboration. But also a whole bunch of new questions and tensions: Which social tasks can we humanely delegate to machines? Do we have a right not to be measured, analysed and coached?

Partners of the Sparks project, that started almost six months ago, have been busy with developing content for the exhibition and activities, communications materials and unravelling the topic of technology shifts in health and medicine. Areas that are being explored in Sparks concentrate around 6 content areas, which are: