SciOut18 Flash Talk: Christine Marizzi
https://rockedu.rockefeller.edu/new_outreach/flash-talk-christine-marizzi/

I love this question because I just wanted to say am I the first speaker who was like not speaking English first language? Maybe I'm as an immigrant is anybody else here? So all about inclusion like equity about my morning side. That's that's what I also brought my slide. This going to help me and so I'm going to read a little bit off perhaps but I'm here to share a very personal story about how art helped me to communicate science better and made me a better science educator. So my name is Christine Marizzi. I'm from Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and I'm a science educator and trained geneticist. I live in York City since a couple of years and as part of my work I develop whole frameworks which student-centered citizen science by diversity research so it's all about from science praying how to break this down bring this to other audiences and students but it's actually no training scientists to be I'm like training and general audience to be to be a scientist. So I direct two citizen science programs that have been replicated worldwide and I see my role as like bridging science to society by bringing the science to unlikely places. For example, I also proudly wear my science pins. I don't know Christine Lieu, she's in the audience this pin you know that we all have and God you know science for everybody I really like to wear my science pin and and create some stories around this because a lot of people approached me on the subway hey what is this night and stuff like hey this is day and universal influence of influenza vaccine and do you believe in vaccines and all those things so it's it's just really fun for me to do to create this one. But more recently I explored you know art as a soft way of scientific inquiries. I don't know how to get to the next slide. Here they allowed me to have one slide and take advantage of that one. I just like pin down here or? Thank you so much. Okay so I want to tell you a very personal story about how I learned you know to use art especially bio art as a meaning of soft scientific storytelling. I say it's a soft because I'm so trained in hard science, data data data, the beautiful graph is what's going to intrigue me you know but it all started off when I was approached by a by a company actually from Austria. I'm Austrian native and they were looking for a person who can do a hands-on activity or maybe an artwork, a 3d artwork, about infectious disease and this is the big face and nose you see in the top-left, the Vienna Science Festival. So I designed together as an artist, a face. You can open the left side was regular, you see anatomy. On the right side actually had velcro and we had like a lot of attendees coming in and just like bombard to velcro these little globular balls we should be the viruses so we actually brought an activity together with you know what kind of face that is and it just really helped me to communicate science. It also helped me to get to people that actually would otherwise not show up so it was a science festival that was actually in the middle of a street art fair and you got like so many people coming over and just doing these activities. We have one of the most popular ones because I don't know I don't have students I mean I don't have kids and I have been working with students but students are never and kids are never going to show up to a fair and see what can I see they always can ask you what can I do. And the feedback that we got in Vienna there's not much hands-on science. We have one location but every time we go to a science fair it's kind of a crafty there is really really like this one and my highlight was when I actually had a diversity party coming over they just saw this and then they just totally wanted to be scientists and be the virus affecting us so this was one thing. Then coming back to New York I realized actually there are a lot of meetups of people outside of science that are intrigued by biological systems. So I was part of a core working group but it was called Nodes and Networks New York City that Heather Barnett, she's a she's a science communicator and artist in London with on the laser and she brought people together to actually explore the city as a superorganism which was really fascinating because you know she brought architects together, science communicators, the people from the Met media, different museums and you know we played around with agar with structures, with exploring you know microbes it was just really fun and then highlight was to actually ask people to to play out and act as biological systems in public spaces like the park and they're also like you know just this collision between art and science and people being creative just really there was a really nice overlap for me to learn how to communicate my science better and that was really what helped me in the next project. I was approached by people from GenSpace and there was the open call in a new museum idea city festival and their call for that year was the invisible City and at this time it was also this paper by Chris Mason right across the street about the New York City subway swabbing you know where they claimed you kind of can fit all microbes or electronic city and people kind of like afraid. So we used this as a platform to invite people from the general public to actually paint a collective artwork using live microbes and make a painting of New York City. So but what we did is we did not only go to a street festival we totally stripped the whole project from scientific lingo so we framed it as an art crafty experience. We had scientists and artists working together which is really interesting because I'm a scientist I wanted to get the science right they wanted to get art right and in the little space the gray area between you know you're gonna listen to the other side but like what other people said just before me this is when you know the real interaction is going to happen. This is how we can just like you know work together so we brought this out there and it was just really it was just really nice to see you know how people could show up, don't know that it gonna talk about science and designs in a couple of seconds. We told them this is an invisible paint you are gonna get some gloves on because you have some live microbes in there which was the first question oh my god I thought they're only bad so just talking about what people are afraid of by exposing them to well we move away from the germ theory of disease you can just use this you know to make something really beautiful like an artwork which is living and breathing. So that was really one one thing that really touched me so the New York City bio map was the later on submitted to the ASM Agar Art competition and I don't know if the if the ASM representers are here. Maybe you can talk to her later on exactly. So We win second prize that year and the picture really stuck into a lot of people heads and you can maybe talk to him later on it really helped them to find a segue how to speak to people from community labs and to bring this hands-on activity and also this way to talk about microbes and microbiology to people are actually maybe might be intimidated by a going to a classic institution like I'm from Cold Spring Harbor. A lot of people don't want to talk to me because I represent an institution so working as a community lab is actually different and the second thing is also to find a way to speak to people that might otherwise be intimidated by science and find another way into you know to do some really really nice science outreach. So because this activity was successful I figured okay maybe we should actually take to service out one of our programs at a DNA Learning Center and because we really did something always which is focused and zoomed in on DNA but why not play some play around with something crafty. So we opened our space for overall series of Saturdays and we had like the house full. I've never seen any risks like anything so successful like this before. Artworks that have been created in my workshop they also like won the Agar contest again and again which is also like really interesting for me to see like this hidden creativity and and the butterfly down there it was done by a ten year old student so she she was like totally great. So the lesson that I found out about this one you know when you are I know I've been working in science education since 12 years okay and I think I can go out there and talk to people about science and love science and people feel like see I get really passionate about this one but you really have to go out there one day and just try to find an area where you're going to struggle. I know we all know it but we don't do it and just like talking to artists it was not easy believe me and it really taught me stopping being such a scientist and sometimes go out of my science brain and go into people's hearts. So doing art helped me to let art do the talking because a picture speaks to you more intuitively and you're more interesting than me like lecturing you about you know microbes and I don't know piet mondrian you know like probably boogie woogie and be using reductionist approach I have two waterways and all these things you just use this like you know a tracing of your eyes but just like jumping up and down so no forget about this. Like a picture is just going to draw people in differently and that's that's actually really helped me to to be a better science educator and talk about you know reach people that they are actually going to talk about the fears on another level so that's what I wanted to share hopefully does make sense and I'm happy to take any questions! It's more of a comment because STEAM of course is becoming a thing I didn't mention STEAM, yes it's a steam activity. Yeah and listening recently to Mae Jemison, an astronaut. She was a dancer her whole life, is a dancer and just how the creativity of the art form informed her work as a researcher and those things are not opposite or separate they are they were necessary together. I do see it as complementary as well and I'm very inspired by Eric Kandel who wrote two wonderful books about art and science and I met him recently and you know he says you know we just keep doing this he saw this picture he said you just keep doing this. Well you know this is ours I did this all in my free time by the way. This is my little side project but maybe I should just like doing more of this. Never free time in science education.