Public Engagement

Public engagement is a concept that encompasses a wide range of collaborative activities between organisations and their stakeholders/partners as well as society at large. The concept is also a part of open science as it involves an active exchange and mutual relationship between researchers and stakeholders with the aim of making science more accessible.

Public Engagement is a term that is widely used in a variety of different sectors and organisations. The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) in the UK defines public engagement in the following way:

Public engagement is a two-way process, involving interaction and listening, with the goal of generating mutual benefit.

Mutual benefit and opportunities for mutual learning between researchers and the general public are an important part of the NCCPE’s definition as they want to emphasise that public engagement benefits everyone involved. Public engagement is also a much more active and engaged approach than, for example, science communication.

Why public engagement?

There are several reasons to undertake public engagement.

• creating collaborative opportunities for different organisations to participate in the development of society, both in terms of knowledge and capacity-building.
• increasing the understanding of the cultural relevance of science in society and creating opportunities for people to discuss and participate in research.
• embracing multiple perspectives and multi-disciplinary knowledge in order to make research more meaningful and achieve scientific progress.
• learn from each other, share knowledge, develop new skills as well as gain new insights, ideas, or inspiration for new research projects.

Different types of public engagement

Public engagement can take many different forms. It can be about involving the public in research, for example, through co-creation activities with end users, citizen science, public dialogues and patient involvement. It can also include collaborations in which researchers, students and civil society work together on research projects or involve different sectors e.g. science and art. Whilst the aims behind these approaches, and the processes are different, what they all have in common is a description of an aspiration to better connect the work and research of higher education institutions with research institutes, companies and society.

How does VA work with public engagement?

Public engagement is at the heart of much of VA’s work and we work actively with different forms of public engagement in the following national and international projects:

• Allthings.BioPRO  
  In this EU project, we are running co-creation workshops to help develop a serious game on the topic of the bioeconomy. The aim is to increase the public’s awareness and knowledge about the bioeconomy through gamification.  
  
• ForskarFredag – Researchers’ Night in Sweden
  The last Friday in September has been declared European Researchers’ Night by the European Commission. Events are organised annually in over 370 cities throughout Europe. Known as ForskarFredag in Sweden, the science festival ​​creates opportunities for dialogue and meetings between researchers and the general public to highlight what science is about, how research is conducted, and that research is exciting and relevant to our everyday lives.

• Researchers’ Night mass experiment
  Since 2009 VA has run an annual citizen science project, as part of the ForskarFredag science festival, in which the public and school classes across Sweden are invited to participate in real research.
  
• Science Café
  A Science Café is a meeting place for anyone who is curious about research. Over a drink, researchers and the public together discuss a current issue or new findings of interest. Science cafés are run in many countries around the world and VA disseminates knowledge about the concept as well as other formats for researcher dialogues.
  
• TechEthos
  The aim of TechEthos is to explore the ethical challenges and societal consequences of technologies. VA is involved in gathering societal perspectives through public engagement events, dialogues and exhibitions.
  
• YouCount
  In the YouCount project we are developing and testing different methods to increase young people’s participation in society.

Further information

• What is public engagement? NCCPE
• RRI Toolkit/public engagement – a toolkit with resources and guidance
• Why public engagement matters, AAAS

Relevant social media hashtags: #publicengagement