Science Guerrilla. Science in a physical space, «from the lab to the street», is a workshop that took place in February 2020, in Barcelona (Spain) within the Transdisciplinary Science communication Training at Elisava organized for the ChromDesign project researchers. I, Carla Molins Pitarch, developed the session with Dr. Miquel Santasusana.

During the first conversations with Miquel, we talked about different methods that he and his peers at Domestic Data Streamers have used to engage random people in the streets to do something, in their case, mainly asking questions. Let’s see what we could propose to our team of scientists!

In the end, our approach was to work through the steps needed to go from a very complex speech to something that is surprising and somehow acts as a hook to engage in a conversation. We knew it might bring some of my ChromDesign colleagues out of their comfort zone, but we also knew that part of the learning process was going out there and iterating and adapting to the situation.

Post-its, color markers, paper stock, low-cost materials, and lots of creativity were the main ingredients to convey very flashy and punchy questions.

One of the critical points of this session was being such a great team of people by having many motivated, excited, and talented scientists willing to share what they do to get many people interested. We got quite a crowd!

For me, who I had more of an observer’s role, I applaud the effort and willingness of everyone to do their best and try different strategies to attract people, which I can tell you is not easy.

The session was a great success, and multiple valuable outcomes from all participants were collected. Science Guerrilla session implied being able to communicate science differently!

I have pretty fond memories of this activity and all the afterward conversations talking about how tricky it was and how everyone loved it in the end. I’d love to repeat this session elsewhere one day.