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From 2011.igem.org

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Outreach

To increase awareness of synthetic biology, iGEM, and our project in the general public we set up an outreach program. In this program we have radio iGEM, a popular radio broadcast of interviews and other fun stuff, two college interns who worked with us on different projects, and a showcase of our project at an event in London’s Natural History Museum.

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Radio iGEM

Radio iGEM started out small with our desire to broadcast the music we listen to in the lab to other iGEM teams using the Twitter hashtag #RadioiGEM. Quickly enough, this developed into a full-blown podcast that is also broadcast live. In Radio iGEM, we talk about all things synthetic biology and get guest speakers to discuss their projects. As part of the show, we also play free music.

Listen to Radio iGEM here.

Episode 1. What makes a good scientific presentation?

In this episode, Frank interviews Outreach Officer and winner of Famelab 2007, Nic Harrigan to find out how the iGEM teams can prepare for their presentations.

Episode 2. iGEM Watch Watch

In this episode, Frank interviews the writers of the popular iGEM Watch blog to find out what inspired them to do it, and Frank finds out which teams have attracted their interest so far. Note: Due to a technical hitch, only half of the interview is online.

Episode 3. The George Freeman interview

In this episode, Frank is given ten minutes with George Freeman MP to ask some questions about the political situation surrounding GM technology. Note: The sound quality is poor due to a bad phone line.

Episode 4. The green siege (Radio Play)

In this special episode, written by Christopher Schoene, the Imperial iGEM team acts out a short play set in the future that Synthetic Biology might take us to.

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Script writing

Click on the download button to download a copy of the script.

Using creative writing as a form of outreach is a novel approach that has not been taken by any other iGEM team before. For episode four of Radio iGEM Chris, who had taken a creative writing course during his second year, decided to write a script that is set in a world where our platform technology is widely implemented. In order to create this world and make it believable he decided to set it in a familiar setting. By weaving the world seamlessly into the narrative of a short high school setting.

Also, in order to give a little bit of a background to this world he decided to use a common trick that involves using a narrative within a narrative. By using the context of a history lesson it was easy to use Mrs. Parkin's dialogue as a plot device to introduce the background in a non-intrusive manner. Then, by using the dialogue between the characters he was able to keep it entertaining while also making it relatable to the listener. By making the world a believable and yet familiar, he hoped to take out the fear that is associated by many people with the unknown of genetic engineering.

The editing process for this short story consisted of a workshop where Deborah Pearson (a professional theatremaker) and our RCA advisor CJ (who cooked a lovely meal for us as well) took the story and relentlessly slashed through any sections and sentences that were not up to scratch. This process took several hours but it was all worth it in the end. Jake (the "antagonist") became more snarky than before while Mrs. Parkin was given more of an attitude. We hope that you will enjoy listening to our play (bear in mind that we are all new at acting!).

College interns

As part of our project, we had two A-level students from two different colleges come in and help us with the science and art aspects of our project.

Kiran is about to start studying for his A-levels. He arrived on the 3rd of August and remained with us until the 12th of August. In this time he learned a lot in the lab, even contributing towards some of our results (see the study on E. coli survivability in soil). Kiran will be pioneering his college's efforts towards their participation in next year's High school iGEM jamboree. Watch our interview with Kiran below:

Poppy is a soon-to-be A level student. She joined us for a week in early September to start her artistic project which is inspired by the Arts Catalyst lectures from the artists who create work that “experimentally and critically engages with science”, with an aim to create an artistic expression to aid the communication of the project to the general public.

To represent the team's experimental use of GFP, a protein that exhibits fluorescence when under blue light in order to prove that the plant roots had taken up this engineered bacteria, Poppy's artistic project utilizes fluorescein, a compound that dyes orange yellow colour in the present of UV light and glow in the dark, to illustrate how root growth of the plants infected by the bacteria is promoted.

She says, "Due to the frieze like arrangement you will have viewed my work from left to right, allowing a story to be told. Please have a closer look using the portable light. This emits UV, causing the fluorescein to glow. The larger plants seem brightest; representing the successful uptake of engineered bacteria and therefore promotion of root growth."

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"Science Uncovered" event at the Natural History Museum

We have been kindly asked to participate at the Science Uncovered event on the 23rd of September. Unfortunately we will not be able to include any footage on our wiki before the freeze for the regional Jamboree, but we are really looking forward to engaging with the public and explaining our project. We'll keep you updated via twitter!

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Publicising our wiki

Lisa got creative and made a QR code linking to our wiki out of post-its on the window of the Bessemer building at Imperial College London. This window faces a large open courtyard that hundreds of people walk through every day to get to different ends of the campus. We have seen lots of people take out their mobile phones to use the QR scanning app, you can try it yourself on the picture below!