The Science meets Performance Art meets Society workshop with Ran Peleg and Cristina Olivotto at Szakacsi (Hungary) was an overwhelming experience. Exchange of Community-engaged Performing Art Practices has been conducting this academy for three years now with the aim of building an inspiring network of organizations in the arts and theatre performance, as well as in the music development to improve the situation of underprivileged children. We were there to throw a bit of science meets society into the mix as an #agentofchange. It was an opportunity to interact and intimately share space with a group of Roma people, social art practitioners -- dancers, theatre artists, clowns -- psychologists, and wonderful educators. I spent the week in a psychodrama workshop, learning how to be a clown, learning the art of Comedia dell'arte and sharing stories of science and society, and of course analysing our existence on this planet. Muchos love and shot out to everyone who was there to make a crazy nice and reflective experience. Thank you Balázs Simon, Timea Szőke, Petrányi Barna to make this experience possible.

2. ‘THE STORY OF’ Foundation is an informal learning
project that offers experiential, spontaneous learning
opportunities on interdisciplinary content with the wider
benefit of developing the sensibility to patterns that
connect. We are / for the 21st Century Inquirer

4. Linking the arts and humanities with science,
technology, engineering and mathematics brings
the scientist, engineer, entrepreneur, artist and
designer into dialogue to offer the widest range of
opportunity and academic and societal insight for
experimentation and innovation.
Science Education for Responsible Citizenship
European Commission

5. Does science relate to art?

9. Does art relate to science?

11. What do art and science have in common?

17. Opportunities
• New solutions: can we afford more of the same?
• New ways of thinking: can we see and do things differently?
• New knowledge: can we think and act differently?
• New understanding of new materials and creativity: can we use natural
and synthetic materials differently?

18. Risks
• Lack of opportunities for artists and creatives to participate in
interdisciplinary research in techno-scientific fields
• Existing limits in current arts, cultural and creative industries policy and
funding
• Need for state / country wide strategy for creativity in industry and
creativity in science

19. Objective
Develop a science meets society story into a performance.
(Either of these or another)
Criteria
• Concept / intent (idea, resonance of story with science)
• Experiential opportunity (passive, immersive, interactive,
participative, investigative)
• Learning impact (pedagogy, provoking thought)
• Meeting scenario (logistics, sustainability, budget constraints)

20. To Note:
• Concept Description / intent
• Target audience / Experiential opportunity
• Objectives of the performance / Learning impact
• Genre / Meeting scenario

21. Teachers tell their students stories from the first day they start school and
children’s storybooks are better made and more engaging than they have
ever been. Yet stories are an underused medium for learning. Pushed to the
margins of the curriculum to stimulate art and drama activities, but forgotten
or neglected when the study of more ‘serious’ subjects begins.
Kieran Egan, in Teaching as Storytelling, p. 5.

22. A first insight into modern narrative theory regards the fact that every good story has a
consistent plot. Effective storytelling includes a carefully developed structure in the
organization of the narrated facts […] The simplicity of a good story is deceiving. A simple
plot is a piece of art. If we want to go beyond the pure repetition of stories already
created, we have to deal with the theory of poetics.
Fritz Kubli, in Can the Theory of Narratives Help Science Teachers Be Better
Storytellers, Science & Education, 10, p. 595.

24. Topic: The Space of and Within an Atom
Question: What does it mean when you hear that atoms are made up of 99.99% empty
space?
Key points
- Take the atom: hydrogen
- Quantum photograph of hydrogen
- What does an atom look like?
Some links to get you started:
- A story about hydrogen: http://goo.gl/gI6zwE
- Video on how small is an atom: https://goo.gl/3QgKBM
- Article on the first quantum image: https://goo.gl/f1PcUO
- Video on touching https://goo.gl/pwGXlP and https://goo.gl/YkcNvJ

26. Topic: The case of an endemic spider
Question: Should we preserve endemic species? Why?
Key points
- Tylorida sataraensis
- What happens when humans close in on the environment of an endemic species
- Are humans endemic to Earth?
Some links to get you started:
- Inspirational video a spider: goo.gl/kT4JdO
- More about the spider: goo.gl/9uIs5C
- More on endemism: https://goo.gl/M8E5Kj

28. Topic: Personal Space, Cross Cultural Experience
Question: Can personal space really be quantified?
Key points
- Proxemics: the study of human use of space and the effects that population density has on
behavior, communication, and social interaction
- Does it vary widely across cultures?
- Should the “hidden rules” be made visible?
- Opportunity for arts-based inquiry?
Some links to get you started:
- What is proxemics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proxemics
- Video on proxemics: https://goo.gl/54ZrDN
- Video on the psychology of personal space: https://goo.gl/pwR7yN
- Article on proxemics and culture: http://goo.gl/8pOC8O

30. Topic: Near Death Experiences
Question: Where do we go when we die?
Key points
• More people today are coming back to life because of scientific and technological advances 
More recorded experiences
• Common characteristics: Peace, Body separation, Entering darkness, Seeing the light,
Entering the light
• Scientific explanations
• Are they good enough?
• Alternatives, in religion?
Some links to get you started:
• General information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-death_experience
• Scientific explanations: http://goo.gl/AFDzkg
• Bardo: http://goo.gl/WhR73e

32. Topic: Children psychological diseases and medicines
Question: What's the limit between a disease and a social behaviour?
Key points
- How to define normality?
- What about dependency?
Some links to get you started:
• ADHD definition (National Institute of Mental Health): http://goo.gl/ICZchV
• Are doctors diagnosing too many kids with ADHD (Scientific American): http://goo.gl/1T6JNT

34. Topic: Climate refugees
Question: Should high consumptions countries pay for present and future climate refugees?
Key points
- climate change is changing the world
- water levels in the seas are rising and weather pattern are changing making some places
uninhabitable in the present and more so in the future
- while climate change is caused by all countries, some are higher contributors than others
- some countries are paying a higher price for climate change – for example the Maldives - very
small and poor country. Maldives is the lowest country on earth with an average height of 1.5
meters above sea level which (if predictions are correct) will make it uninhabitable within a few
decades
- some voices say the Maldives be compensated by the international community
- others say climate change might not be a man-made phenomenon and living conditions are a
lottery – sometimes you win, sometimes you lose
Some links to get you started:
• https://goo.gl/vWuKMX
• http://goo.gl/6UadlW

36. Topic: Finding alien life
Question: Does it make sense spending billions on trying to find life we don’t even know exists?
Or is there a better use of Taxpayer money?
Key points:
- Billions are spent each year on space exploration. Some of this money is aimed at special
laboratories and projects that aim to find aliens, such as: NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration
- Even if it does, will we be able to communicate with it? Do we have to tools to find it?
- Planet earth is limited in resources, should we spend these resources on more urgent
problems?
Some links to get you started:
For and against space exploration - http://goo.gl/cJZw3U
Why do we spend billions of dollars to find if life exists on other planets? - https://goo.gl/NZ4tkr
How much money is spent on space exploration? - http://goo.gl/gFE7FV
Nine Good Reasons for Space Exploration - https://goo.gl/O1tqJk

38. Topic: Nuclear Power
Question: Nuclear power has an almost zero carbon footprint: with a world that is getting warmer
every day, doesn’t it make sense to produce all our electricity using nuclear power?
Key points
- Nuclear power produces almost no carbon footprint
- It produces very little waste (which must be buried deeply underground because of its
radiactivity)
- Yet we all remember the Chernobyl (1986) and Fukushima (2004) disasters as well as the
Nagasiky and Hiroshima bomb droppings in 1945
Some links to get you started:
http://goo.gl/4kphbJ