This is our SECOND free collaborative Northwest Noggin, Brainfacts.org and Society for Neuroscience webinar devoted to interdisciplinary, arts-integrated outreach efforts around the world!
Our first webinar – “Reconnecting our brains, one cell at a time,” is available for viewing on the Brainfacts.org website – and also here on nwnoggin.org.
LEARN MORE: Reconnecting our brains, one cell at a time
LEARN MORE: #showusyourbraincell
Webinar introduction!
We are Bill Griesar and Jeff Leake. We teach interdisciplinary neuroscience at Portland State University and co-founded an entirely volunteer outreach nonprofit known as Northwest Noggin.
LEARN MORE: Nonprofit Noggins
We go places
We bring our diverse, informed and enthusiastic graduates and undergraduates excited by neuroscience research and their own arts-integrated study of brains and behavior into our wonderful community – to K-12 public schools, youth correctional facilities, houseless youth centers, coffee shops and pubs – to listen, and hear what people already know and what they’d like to know, and to see where our stories and discoveries from labs and classrooms intersect.
LEARN MORE: NOGGIN BLOGGIN
To see faces light up while a grad student describes their work on sleep, or anxiety, or depression, or adolescent brain development – a grad student who often looks like them – is inspiring.
LEARN MORE: Una sinapsis con Sitton
We make things
Like pipe cleaner – and found object – brain cells!
We also examine real human and other animal brains to motivate and spark compelling conversations. Since 2012 we’ve met and connected (synaptically) with almost 50,000 people, again (every last one of us) – entirely as volunteers.
LEARN MORE: Thankful for brains
We love this!
Our whole community, like yours, is rich in talent and potential, and it is a joy to be here, and to be challenged, learn, build, explore, discover, hold brains, make art, get inspired and inspire in turn.
“To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.”
– Mark Twain
Our students keep coming back, again and again.
LEARN MORE: Empowerment through Art & Brains
Science, like many disciplines, suffers from a failure to welcome multiple perspectives, and this undermines both innovation and discovery.
LEARN MORE: All is in motion, is growing, is you
We’ve certainly worked at universities that consider outreach part of their institutional marketing plan. They’d visit privileged private schools, charge tuition or admission, and relied on “in-reach,” where busloads are brought into intimidating, unfamiliar spaces where the scientists feel most at home. They’d read from memorized “elevator pitches” (press PLAY) and other pre-approved scripts. Sometimes they’d treat fellow human beings as “subjects” – and didn’t see people, listen to them, or challenge their own existing biases, expand opportunity or ultimately learn anything new.
LEARN MORE: BioGifting brains
LEARN MORE: Synapsing in San Diego @ SfN!
LEARN MORE: Brains to the Streets!
LEARN MORE: Honest selves @ Hosford
Today we’re going to talk about the power of going places where you are NOT the only one with valuable information, for interdisciplinary outreach designed to engage, invite and value the perspective and contributions of others.
You can do this too!
LEARN MORE: A brain garden grows @ p:ear
We are honored to welcome Richard Wingate, the Head of Anatomy (and Brains :)) at Kings College London and the Editor in Chief of BrainFacts.org, and Leigh Wilson, who is both the Public Engagement manager at the MRC Centre for Neurodevelopmental Disorders at Kings and an avid outreach practitioner, as they explore the question:
“What does outreach mean to you?”
LEARN MORE: Until the story takes shape
Ultimately outreach is different things to different people.
We asked outreach practitioners, collaborators, and teachers to define outreach. Then we asked Richard and Leigh to talk about their own responses to the clips. Enjoy!
LEARN MORE: Action and Potential in Education, Outreach, and Research
And keep going, listening, learning, sharing, reaching out and making new connections!
