Science on Stage at the ASE Annual Conference, UK

The Science on Stage festival in Turku was celebrated and the announcement that the 2026 festival will be held in Klaipeda was promoted during the Association for Science Education (ASE) Annual Conference at the University of Nottingham, UK between 9-11 January 2025. The ASE Annual Conference is the largest conference of science educators in the UK and several members of the UK delegation in Turku and most of the Science on Stage National Steering Committee attended.

Six of the Turku delegation contributed to a ‘Best of Science on Stage 2024’ session where they described project ideas they had seen in Turku and connections with other teachers they had made. Stuart Farmer, the chair of the UK National Steering Committee, provided background information about Science on Stage, details of the resources and events available, and details of how UK teachers can apply to attend the 2026 festival. In addition to this summary session, several of the Turku delegation also had other sessions on their projects. This included Maren Kelly with ‘Wildflower seed bombs – practical approaches using all three sciences’, Colleen Reesink-Wells with ‘Replacing plastics – an investigation into the suitability of natural polymers’, Vicky Walsh with ‘The most important animal of all – What happened next?’, and Zlatina Ivanova and Nasko Stamenov presented their joint project ‘Borderless Chemistry’.

In the same week, Science on Stage Ambassador Kulvinder Kaur Johal's article on Science on Stage and the Turku festival was published in the latest issue of the ASE Primary Science journal.

Report: Stuart Farmer