3. THE TEAM
For your Café Scientifique to run smoothly and be a success, the team
should be diverse and have different interests and skills. The team
should have people from:
Different subjects: The issues that you are likely to be
discussing may be grounded in science but you will be talking about
politics, sociology, art, history, philosophy and many other subjects,
so it is important that your team is not just made up of students with a
passion for science. Aim for a broad mix of interests, to encourage an
exciting and varied assortment of topics to stimulate debate and
discussion.
Different year groups: Your café is going to be a success and
you won’t want to see it grind to a halt when you leave school or
college. So it’s vital that a range of students is involved and then
younger students can continue when older ones leave. That way, the whole
group doesn’t have to be replaced at once and there will be members with
some experience remaining to carry on with the cafés. You can find
further guidelines on how to ensure that your café continues in
‘Continuity’.
Team meetings
Each café will need around three team meetings to organise it but you
might choose to meet more regularly, say every week. In your team
meetings you’ll choose topics, make decisions and update the team on the
planning and organisation for the next café. The main decisions that you
will need to make are:
- The venue
- One of the aims of Café Scientifique is to take science out of
the classroom and into an informal space, where discussions can be
relaxed and easy. So the
venue should be a place such as a library or common room, where the
audience can relax, eat and drink (especially if the café is held at
lunchtime) and participate. You may have to organise more chairs and
change the layout of the room. There’s no need for any technical
equipment – with only ten minutes or so to introduce the topic,
speakers won’t need projectors or microphones. It is a good idea to
take a walk around the school, perhaps with your teacher
co-ordinator, to look at possible spaces and spot any benefits or
problems.
- Timing
- Cafés will happen out of class time, as the audience should be
there because they are interested in participating or listening and
are able to come and go as they please. Whether you hold your café
meetings at lunchtime or after school will depend on your school
day, the restrictions of your venue and when you think you will get
a bigger audience.
- The topic
- The range of topics out there is massive, from bioterrorism to
plastic surgery. To attract a good audience, topics should be
contemporary, controversial or imaginative. You’ll find some
suggestions for topics at the end of this pack but you are free to
choose whatever you want. Ideas might come from newspapers, radio or
TV. If you have the beginning of an idea but you’re not quite sure,
discuss it with the project organiser. She’s there to find you a
speaker to match the topic that you want to discuss.
- The audience
- Aim to have as much of an open door policy as you can, both for
students and teachers, although you may want to set a minimum year
group which can attend. Also, think about inviting pupils from other
local schools (you will need to speak to your teacher co-ordinator
about this) and inviting family and friends to an after-school or
special meeting.
Different roles
It is a good idea to assign different roles to different people, so
that it is clear who is responsible for what and the team benefits from
everyone’s skills and experiences. You will need to fill at least these
roles but you might want to break them down even further. You might want
to set up other team jobs, e.g. photographer, but for a skeleton crew,
you will need:
- Speaker Liaison
The speaker liaison will take on tasks like:
- Being the point of contact for the speaker – they will contact
you if they have any questions about the event.
- Making sure that you have full contact details for the speaker,
including a mobile number in case anything goes wrong
- Briefing the speaker about what you want to discuss, outlining
what you discussed in the team meeting, why you chose the topic and
the types of questions that you would like answered.
- Making sure that the speaker has details of where the school is,
when they are due to arrive and where to go when they do.
- Meeting the speaker in reception and bringing them to the venue.
- Logistics
This person is responsible for the nitty-gritty details that make
sure the cafés run smoothly. Things like:
- Scheduling the cafés – making sure that the whole team is
available and that they don’t clash with any other major school
events.
- Booking the space for the cafes
- Organising the layout of the room, recruiting helpers if
necessary
- Organising any refreshments
- Making sure that Reception knows about the event
- Making sure that there is water available for the speaker
- Writing a timetable for the day of the event and circulating it,
so that everyone is clear what is happening and when.
- Chair
The public face of Café Scientifique. Their main role will be on the
day; welcoming the audience and speaker, directing audience questions,
encouraging debate and discussion and introducing new questions if
things slow down. This is a key role and not an easy one. It may be a
role for one person or you might want to rotate it around the team. The
project organiser can help with advice and techniques for chairing.
- Publicity
The success of your cafés depends on people turning up and that
depends on the effectiveness of your publicity. You will need to
publicise the cafes well in advance and make sure that information about
them is easily available. Publicity could involve things like:
- Flyers
- Posters
- A website or page on the school website
- A newsletter or update giving details of the next few meetings
and their topics
- Talking about cafe scientifique in assemblies
- Administration
Someone will need to be responsible for making sure the organising
group runs smoothly. This will involve:
- Scheduling and arranging a room for team meetings – and making
sure everyone knows about them
- Keeping hold of all the paperwork
- Keeping notes of team meetings - especially what was decided
- Keeping contact details for all the members of the organising
group.
- You can download more detailed information about these roles
here. (PDF
file)
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