Following several discussions that have been happening in parallel across the UK’s #scicomm community, we thought that it would be a good idea to create a community podcast.

The aims and objectives of this podcast would be as follows:

  1. To engage scicomm communities and provide access to a collective memory
  2. To help the community to move away from only a ‘whizz bang’ approach to science communication by sharing what works and highlighting best practice.
  3. To raise awareness of sci comm literature in an easily digestible format.
  4. To provide support for members of the community who want to learn how to use podcasts to develop dialogue around science
  5. To promote diversity in STEM
  6. To preserve a holistic record of SciComm best practice and interrogate change and trends among the community.

Audience:
The format of the podcast will be a series of weekly segments. Each of the segments’ hosts would be responsible for arranging the content and recording using a good quality mic in mp4 format, which would then be sent to the sound editor to put together.

Call for Volunteers:
In order to make this podcast happen we need volunteers from across the community to contribute. If you are interested in contributing to this podcast then please fill in this form, volunteering your skills. And bear in mind that in order for the podcast to be successful we need more than only presenters!

A working version of the Scicomm Podcast Google Document can be found here:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1UvzK6f-mOfuxGhDijJ-hOjl2aYea1uHUdfrcDNxjB2c/edit?usp=sharing

Applications of Interest:
If you are interested in contributing to this podcast then please fill in this form:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSePMqA-YBwzh5T3YPfB45v_lY7xMHS_zo58AhqcYoisfQk9bg/viewform
by Thursday 29th November at 23:55 GMT.

At the moment we envisage the podcast to be a voluntary, community-led contributions project. However, in the longer term we may seek funding to allow this to be more sustainable, cover core expenses and editing time and remove barriers for involvement where we can. Any suggestions for funding or people interesting in developing this aspect are also most welcome.

This message is posted on behalf of Dr Sam Illingworth, Senior Lecturer in Science Communication, MMU.