Festival of Social Sciences
The 22nd ESRC Festival of Social Science took place from Saturday, 19 October - Saturday, 9 November.
With the theme "Our Digital Lives," we hosted 17 diverse events, primarily in schools, that engaged 638 participants. These events highlighted the potential of the social sciences to shape our understanding of technology’s role in daily life.
Please see below two examples from this year's event: the "Mobile with Monsters Art workshop" with Dr. Janos Mark Szakolczai and Rodrigo Hernandez Gomez and the "Write, Play and Record" workshop with Dr. Elizabeth Nelson and Dave Gerow.
Mobile with Monsters Art workshop
This workshop aimed to bring out the monsters within our phones creatively. This will provide an opportunity to talk about them and reflect on our fears and joys around mobile use.
The workshop creates an awareness of the use, dangers and concerns of smartphone usage in families and among young adults. By creating clay 'Mobile with Monsters", attendants could physically interpret, discuss and concretise what sorts of 'monsters' phones have inside them.
Write, Play and Record
For this event Dave Gerow told a story called Baa to the children, who joined in with interjections, laughter, and sound effects, shaping the narrative in unexpected ways. They retold the story together, mixing creativity and technology. Divided into groups, the children created props and sound effects for assigned characters and took turns telling and reshaping their stories. The activity encouraged playful, imaginative storytelling using technology, craft, and collaboration.
The event took concepts of authoring and acts of (re)storying with technologies and crafts to create a dynamic and engaging literacy event. The research is based on the work undertaken by the Children’s Literature and Literacies groups at the University of Glasgow and builds on Dr Elizabeth Nelson’s work on play, theatre and digital childhoods.