Ecsite and UNESCO are teaming up to introduce the first ever International Science Centre and Science Museum Day (ISCSMD), coming later this year.

Scheduled for 10 November, the landmark event will be the first of its kind, with the goal to create new ways for scientific institutions to proactively address global sustainability while reaching increasingly diverse audiences.

“It’s a very special day,” said Linda Conlon, Association of Science-Technology Centers (ASTC) board chair and chief executive of the Centre for Life in Newcastle. “We’ve not had one of these days in our history and it’s a wonderful opportunity to bring together all of the networks of the world – Ecsite, ASTC, RedPOP in South America, our colleagues in Africa, Asia Pacific and India – every network in the world is coming together and working in cooperation to celebrate 10 November.”

Run as a joint initiative between world science bodies, with backing from UNESCO, ISCSMD will aim to demonstrate the engagement and impact of the science centre and science museum field, with outcomes from the day’s events and discussions to be presented at the Science Centre World Summit 2017 in Tokyo.

As part of the day’s events, experts from the sector will meet in Paris to discuss best practices and recommendations to address the UN in the future.

“It’s a very imaginative partnership that we’ve forged with UNESCO, the backing of whom is very important,” said Conlon. “There are 17 of the United Nations Sustainable Millennium Goals. We’ve been asked by UNESCO to try and focus on one of those goals to demonstrate what we as science centres are doing and the impact that we have.”

Building upon that UNESCO theme of “Science for Peace and Development,” ISCSMD is asking for individual contributions from science centres along this topic to put forward for events and discussion on 10 November.

“This year’s event will be very much a pilot and an experiment,” said Conlon. “We’ll all be looking and finding our way, but then we’ll have an opportunity to do it again next year in 2017 and then 2018, 2019, and so on and so forth. It’s a wonderful opportunity for us to demonstrate collectively what we can do as a sector.”

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