Abstract
Bright Club is a public engagement initiative bringing together research communication and the performing arts since its inception in London in 2009. Bright Club Ireland was established in Dublin in 2015, and the distinctive combination of science and comedy has made it a unique event in the field of public engagement. This commentary explores why Bright Club was created, how it functions, and catalogues how the lessons learned from Bright Club Ireland might prove useful to science communication professionals working in international transdisciplinary environments seeking to bring science and comedy together at public-facing events.
Keywords
Introduction
Scientific research is a publicly-funded endeavor that affects both day-to-day quality of life and long-term societal development. Yet research can be inaccessible to the public at large, who are often unable to bypass jargon, paywalls, and other forms of gatekeeping. Clear communication of scientific research is of paramount importance to evidence-based policy, open societies, and creating an informed public, but this communication must be tailored to different audiences and contexts. A great deal of work has been done to bring science to younger audiences through the use of dialogue and participatory approaches to public engagement, and while there is no longer a dependency on the deficit model of public engagement, more work that targets other groups is needed. This commentary outlines the development of Bright Club Ireland, a public engagement project combining science with other academic disciplines and stand-up comedy in informal settings. The field of public engagement with science in Ireland will be considered, along with the operational processes underpinning Bright Club, the type of audience that attends Bright Club in Ireland, and the lessons learned from its implementation.
Public Engagement With Science in Ireland
The worldwide growth of initiatives to engage the public with research (Stilgoe, Lock, & Wilsdon, 2014) has influenced how science is communicated in Ireland (Roche, Davis, O’Boyle, Courtney, & O’Farrelly, 2017). While these activities have long taken the form of traditional science communication events, such as public lectures, science shows, and science festivals (Roche, Cullen, & Ball, 2016), international initiatives, like “FameLab” (Zarkadakis, 2010) only spread to Irish shores in 2013, with “Soapbox Science” (Petherick, Pettorelli, & Sumner, 2017) and “Pint of Science” (Paul & Motskin, 2016) being held in Ireland for the first time in 2014. A comprehensive look at recent developments in the fields of public engagement and science communication in Ireland can be found in Trench, Murphy, and Fahy (2017). Among these varied public engagement schemes, Bright Club is a unique public event where academics learn to develop short stand-up comedy style sets exploring their research. Any sort of performance in front of an audience can be an intimidating prospect for researchers (Roche, 2015), while the added nuance of comedy makes Bright Club a compelling example of public engagement to consider. Although there have been efforts to evaluate certain types of traditional public engagement in Ireland (Roche, Stanley, & Davis, 2016), little has been published in the area of evaluating the effects of mixing comedy with science, and when this topic is explored the studies often focus on specific areas, such as climate change (Anderson & Becker, 2018; Bore & Reid, 2014; Moyer-Gusé, Tchernev, & Walther-Martin, 2019; Osnes, Boykoff, & Chandler, 2019).
Bright Club Ireland
The first Bright Club show took place in 2009, developed by Miriam Miller and Steve Cross at University College London (Jahme, 2010). The Bright Club format features academics who have been trained to give short stand-up comedy style sets about their work, performing in a venue associated with comedy, alongside a professional compere and comedic headliner. Interdisciplinary reach was an early embedded value, with speakers selected from science, social science, and humanities to provide a broad cross-section of knowledge. Tickets must be purchased for events, in order to emphasize that Bright Club events are first and foremost professional comedy nights, albeit with science and research at their core. After initial shows sold out, Bright Club events spread across England, and began running in Scotland in 2011. Local organizers received event production training from Steve Cross before developing their own Bright Club events. As of 2019, Bright Club events have been organized in England, Scotland, Australia, Belgium, and Ireland. Cross won the Joshua Phillips Award for Innovation in Science Engagement in 2010 for the development of Bright Club (Manchester Science Festival, 2010).
The Bright Club format was first carried out in Ireland in February 2015, under the direction of Jessamyn Fairfield, then based at the AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research) Centre. The rarity of public engagement events combining performing arts with academic research made the first Bright Club events distinctive additions to the Irish comedy scene. These first events in Ireland were based on the original format developed at University College London, but embraced more comedians and musicians. Fairfield’s experience as an academic, improvisation performer, and stand-up comedian resulted in comedians with academic backgrounds taking part. Training was informed by the Bright Club ethos, utilizing exercises developed from improvisational comedy to empower academics to develop their own material. The 2015 Bright Club events were supported by the AMBER Centre, and from 2016 onward Bright Club received support from the Science Foundation Ireland Discover program. Events have been held in Dublin, Galway, Cork, Westmeath, Sligo, Limerick, and Monaghan. As of 2019, more than 70 Bright Club events have taken place in Ireland.
Bright Club Approach
Bright Club Ireland has three central aims. The first is to build capacity for Irish-based researchers in communication and engagement, toward creating a community of practice. The second is to empower publics to be engaged in and enthusiastic about the role of science in society. The final aim is to contribute to an inclusive society where education and knowledge are accessible to all. In order to achieve these aims, the Bright Club model uses training, performance, and interdisciplinarity to engage researchers and the public. Three months are dedicated to the production of each Bright Club event, which includes three key stages: the recruitment of the academic speakers, the training process, and the production of the event itself (see Figure 1).
General timeline for Bright Club Ireland event production.
Recruiting Academic Speakers
Recruiting academic speakers to perform at Bright Club requires a number of varied actions, rather than one fixed approach. Commonly employed recruitment methods include capitalizing on networking opportunities (conferences, talks, seminars, staff meetings, etc.) to reach out to potential participants; posting open calls on major social networking sites; announcing intention to recruit at events; sending open call e-mails to internal staff mailing lists; building a network of gatekeeper contacts, including Public Engagement Officers from various schools, universities, and other research institutions; encouraging past participants to share information about Bright Club with their colleagues; and organizing training days, workshops, and boot camps.
The Training Process
The training process consists of two primary stages. In the first, participants are sent a bank of resources designed to assist them in the writing process. This file includes a document of tips, links to an instructive video and to representative clips of previous speakers, and written guidelines that set out general expectations and boundaries. The Bright Club team also offers remote support to participants, facilitating the exchange of ideas and drafts between participant and team, and providing feedback. The second stage is composed of a 2-hour workshop, typically held between 1 and 5 days in advance of the event itself. This training was developed by the Bright Club Ireland team, and is designed to familiarize the participants with one another, facilitate a graded approach to becoming comfortable with public performance, and concludes with a live rehearsal of participants’ prepared material. The training facilitator provides continuous feedback on structure, communication, and content, and suggests opportunities to maximize comedic impact. The training also features a peer-to-peer aspect, in which all participants are asked to provide feedback on one another’s prepared material. A third, informal training session takes place on the event night, wherein participants partake in sound checks and receive a demonstration of good microphone technique. This gathering before the event allows participants to relax in the context of the event, prior to the arrival of the audience.
Event Production
There are several elements key to the production of a Bright Club event. The first is the identification of a venue suitable to host a comedy event and the target audience of 50 to 100 people. Venues already associated with mainstream stand-up comedy events are prioritized, and must be in a central location unassociated with a higher education body. One “headline” comedian is booked for a 20-minute performance, with two additional comedians performing for 10 minutes each, while the overall event is hosted by a Bright Club team member. The MC must have the skills to create a supportive environment, wherein the audience know what to expect, and some of the burden of performing in front of a crowd is lifted off the speakers for whom this is a novel experience. Professional graphic designers are employed to create an original poster for each event which is used for promotion on social media sites (see Figure 2). These graphics are also used to promote ticket sales, which begin 4 weeks in advance of the event date. Tickets are generally sold on a social media ticketing platform, such as Eventbrite. A nominal price of €5 is charged in order to add perceived value to the event. A photographer and videographer are employed to record each event. The resulting videos are shared with the speakers, and provided their consent is given, are uploaded on the Bright Club Ireland YouTube channel. In summary, the preparation of the acts and MC, the professional promotional materials and set recordings, paid tickets, and overall production values of each event establish Bright Club as a high-quality entertainment night and not traditional university-led public engagement, which attracts a very different audience.
Professionally designed posters and experienced MCs are central to Bright Club events.
Who Attends Bright Club in Ireland?
To better understand the type of people who are attending Bright Club events in locations across Ireland, a postevent survey was e-mailed to any attendees who registered through a ticket booking website between February 2016 and November 2017. The survey was sent in the days following each event for attendees to complete online and the same ticket booking website was used for all events. In total, 100 event attendees completed the survey (out of about 1,400 attendees), which revealed details about their gender, age, education/professional background, as well as their perceptions of science and comedy.
Gender of Bright Club Attendees in Ireland
Seventy-five percent of the respondents chose to identify as female with 21% identifying as male. A further 1% chose to select the “other” category, while 3% chose not to disclose their gender. For comparison, the audiences were assessed in terms of visible gender using event photography and videography and appeared close to being gender balanced. Given that the postevent survey was circulated online to registered ticket holders, this would suggest that women are perhaps more likely to purchase tickets online, book tickets for multiple people, or complete the online survey. Future work in this area could examine if the interdisciplinary approach, gender balance of the speakers (prioritized during speaker recruitment), or other factors unique to Bright Club are responsible for attracting more women than traditional science engagement or comedy events.
Age of Bright Club Attendees in Ireland
Thirty-six percent of the respondents were in the 30 to 34 age range, while 18% were 26 to 29 years, and 13% were aged 22 to 25 years. A further 12% were 40 to 44, 10% were 35 to 39, 8% were over the age of 50 years, and 3% were between 18 and 21 years old. This demonstrates that 77% of the survey respondents were in the 22 to 40 age range. While this figure could be influenced by factors such as access to the Internet and likelihood to participate in surveys, it also shows that Bright Club is effective at reaching adults who have likely completed their formal schooling but still engage with informal learning environments.
Background of Bright Club Attendees in Ireland
Fifty-nine percent of the respondents had studied science at postgraduate level, and 83% asserted that their job or course of study involves science, technology, engineering, or mathematics. Although this is not unexpected for a new public engagement event in Ireland, it shows the importance of finding ways to reach audiences with different backgrounds. In the past year, Bright Club has significantly expanded its geographical reach in Ireland, while increasing the interdisciplinarity of the events themselves. Future work in this area could investigate the challenge of creating inclusive events away from cities that still have the atmosphere and production values of regular comedy shows.
Perspectives of Bright Club Attendees in Ireland
Respondents were also asked to choose their ideal mix of ideas and entertainment at a Bright Club event by selecting the amount of “science,” “comedy,” “arts,” and “music” they would like at an event. Comedy was deemed to be the most important factor by the majority of respondents, with science also considered essential. The arts and music were much less important, with a small number of respondents indicating that their ideal event would have very little of either. These results show that comedy is not always recognized as a performing art. Sixty-one percent of the respondents had heard in advance about the event they attended by “word of mouth,” while the rest had heard about it from social media, mailing lists, and newspaper articles. Overall, the perspectives of the attendees revealed the importance of understanding cultural contexts and interdisciplinarity when showcasing science, and how a variety night format presents rich opportunities for further research.
Lessons Learned
Based on the experience of establishing a network of Bright Club events in Ireland, three key learnings that may benefit other science communication professionals interested in establishing a Bright Club of their own are:
Find a sponsor or a funding agency to help support the event.
Partner with appropriate venues and comedians (particularly those who appreciate the concept of using comedy to convey complex ideas).
Ensure that both MCs and training experts have the specific skills required both on a comedic level and on a research communication level.
In theory, anyone can start a Bright Club, though experience in comedy, science, public engagement, and event production, as well as funding support, would all make it run more smoothly. The Bright Club name and branding is licensed under the Creative Commons attribution, and so a prospective local organizer could contact the founder Steve Cross or the public engagement team at UCL to receive guidance and ensure that their proposed Bright Club is in keeping with the overall mission of helping “researchers become comedians just for one night” (Bright Club, 2019).
As Bright Club expanded to other locations outside London, each Bright Club event was enacted by national and local organizers adhering to the spirit of the original events in a self-regulating manner. Hence, there is no overseeing body or board of governance; each Bright Club is coordinated solely by local organizers, sometimes with input from other partners. In Ireland, an advisory board of funding partners may provide input, while feedback from evaluation and education researchers helps refine the event production and training methodology. For example, based on evaluation feedback from researchers, Bright Club Ireland was adapted to divide training into several complementary stages.
Overall, Bright Club Ireland has proven to be a worthwhile endeavor, displaying the interconnectedness of research in an accessible and engaging way. In terms of the number of events and attendees, Bright Club has been steadily growing since 2015, showing that there is an appetite for this kind of event in Ireland, as well as a steady stream of researchers who want to take part. The attendees of Bright Club in Ireland are a distinctive audience of well-educated young professionals who deem both comedy and science vital to the event. By bringing together comedy and science, Bright Club has the potential to reach beyond traditional audiences for science engagement, and show that science is a part of society and not separate from it. The next steps in this work will focus on understanding how participating in Bright Club affects the academic speakers involved, as well as comparing evaluation results in Ireland to Bright Club events in other countries.
Footnotes
Acknowledgements
Special thanks are owed to Niamh Shaw and Mary Colclough for their early support, and to Steve Cross for establishing Bright Club and supporting its development across the world.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared the following potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Two of the authors were involved in the production and programing of Bright Club Ireland events.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work would not have been possible without the support of the Science Foundation Ireland Discover program, the Community Knowledge Initiative at NUI Galway, the AMBER (Advanced Materials and BioEngineering Research) Centre, the CÚRAM Medical Device Centre, the Research Office at NUI Galway, and the broader Bright Club Ireland team.
