12 Years of Data, Results and Experiences in the European Researchers' Night Project

TL;DR

This paper reviews twelve years of the European Researchers' Night, highlighting its growth, organizational strategies, and impact on public engagement with science across Europe.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive analysis of the project's development, results, and best practices in science communication over twelve years.

Findings

Significant increase in public engagement from 4,000 to 50,000 attendees.

Expansion to over 30 Italian cities and numerous scientific partners.

The Made in Science project as a successful model for science outreach.

Abstract

Since twelve years the researchers of the Roman area organize the European Researchers' Night, a project funded by European Commission to discover science and meet researchers through an Europe-wide public event dedicated to fun learning. Since the first edition in 2006, when the National Laboratory of INFN's in Frascati hosted 4000 visitors the project is always grown up to 50,000 attendees and more than 50 scientific partners. In the last edition, The Frascati Scienza association, which was born to coordinate the event, operated in over 30 Italian cities from south to north of the peninsula. In addition, the Made in Science project - European Research Week 2016/17 - has been the one of the largest project funded by the European Commission and it's often referred to as a model for organization and communication to the general public. The 12 yeas data collected and results obtained, as well as some of the most important experiences in public communication of science will be shown.