ESCW: Training researchers in Science Communication

Today’s scientists can’t stay anymore closed in their labs just caring about their experiments. New actors are moving on the science’s stage asking to finally meet and know each other: next to the “insiders” we find mass media, policy makers and public. The new landscape generates a double need: promoting a deeper mutual understanding and a tighter relationship between scientists and media, on one side; cultivating a two-way communication between researchers and citizens through dissemination, dialogue and debate, on the other. Scientists’ formation yet, did not include useful tools to face the challenge of dialogue between science and society.
The idea is then to bring together science communication teachers across Europe to ESCW, the European Science Communication Workshops, that opens inside the Science and Society programme of the Sixth Framework Programme. Exchanging information and “best practice”, they will raise key European issues in the training of young scientists in communication with the media, policy makers and the “general public”.
ESCW’s purpose is indeed to develop and deliver science communication workshops to science and technology researchers, particularly those engaged on Framework Programme research projects, for which there are communication training requirements. These workshops will go beyond existing “skills-based” provision to deal with the current climate for dialogue and debate. At the end of this project, the workshops will be available to be given on a self-sufficient, not-for-profit basis.
ESCW builds on and extends the successful workshops of the European Network of Science Communication Teachers, ENSCOT, which was funded under the Framework 5 programme “Raising Public Awareness of Science and Technology”. ENSCOT had 5 member states participating; ESCW will have 12 countries involved: Burgaria, Croatia, Germany, Great Britain, France, Greece, Italy, Ireland. Portugal, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden.