About

Science is a human endeavour; it’s a way to ask questions about the world and test them out. It’s not just a list of facts; it’s a mindset owned by anyone who approaches the world in an open-minded, sceptical, logical, systematic, empirically-oriented, tentative and curious way. It applies in the natural and social sciences, as well as technology, engineering and mathematics.

The BSA's Science: Not Just for Scientists campaign, which ran from 2015 to 2018, aimed to share and stimulate ideas for how science can work with those from all sectors – including the arts, business, politics and sport.

Through the campaign, we wanted to encourage people to look beyond what happens in the lab and help create a world where science is at the heart of society and culture.

Essays

In October 2015, the British Science Association (BSA) published a collection of essays. We challenged our contributors to start a debate on the place of science in our national life and what changes would be needed to make it a bigger part of our culture. 

You can download the essays here: sciencenotjustforscientists_essays.pdf

100 ideas

The campaign then sought to crowdsource 100 ideas to make science a more fundamental part of culture and society. We received ideas from scientists and non-scientists about how science can belong to all of us.

The project was introduced in January 2017 by poet James Massiah in this film:

The archive of 'Ideas' can be explored in this pdf: notjustforscientists_100ideasarchive.pdf