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The power of narrative storytelling

Find this session's presentations here.

Our session will explore the powers of narrative storytelling in science exhibitions and in other science centre experiences.

We believe that we can bring life to exhibitions and enhance communication with visitors via engaging stories, games and other continual forms of narratives. Different forms of art already use these novel ways of getting people inside new realities.

We will share examples of collaborations with a script writer in our exhibition projects and also present ways of storytelling that we have encountered somewhere else. According to our experiences these narratives need thorough planning, professional scripts and a well-designed presentation to meet these targets. In this session, the tool or technology used is not in focus, but just an enabler.

The session will consist of several case study presentations and an active discussion.

Facilitator

Exhibition Producer
Vantaa
Finland

Session speakers

Manager of Exhibition and Featured Experiences
Bergen
Norway
Enhancing the possibility of learning in an exhibit/exhibition by using design, history, culture and local engagement in storytelling. I will present different examples of narratives, and how relating the story to everyday experience might help the guests understanding of science.
Experience Director
Vantaa
Finland
Seven Siblings from the Future is a science center exhibition on the future of Finland and the Finns. It will open in Heureka, The Finnish Science Centre in November 2017. The concept of the future is abstract and vague. Especially for small children the future is a difficult topic. To understand the many possibilities related to the future you need a good general education and children don’t yet have it. Therefore we have build the exhibition around the story of seven siblings - imaginary young people from the future. They represent the future of the Finns and the possible future options Finland may face in the future. Exhibition visitors will help the siblings to solve their different everyday challenges. My presentation will focus on the interplay of science exhibition design and the laws of storytelling. I will plug in my presentation views from our scriptwriter, who normally works on theater.
Ulrike Kastrup, focusTerra
Museum Director
Zurich
Switzerland
SPACE RESEARCHERS AS COMIC HEROES The exhibition will showcase solar system research at the Departments of Earth Sciences and Astronomy (ETH and University of Zürich) using a novel approach of scientific storytelling. We have worked closely with our ‘local heroes’ to highlight their research and get to the heart of what each person’s ‘big question’ is that makes them tick. We’ve succeeded in bringing out the personal in our colleagues’ research and we take the audience into their world to see what research is really like. Our presentation format - a science comic - is a combination of art and science and provides what we hope is a fun journey for lay people and experts alike into the science world of our planetary environment.