Museums, botanical and zoological gardens have long been combining two different features: the conservation of collections or living resources and their presentation to the public. There are in Montpellier and the surrounding area places for scientific mediation: the “Jardin des Plantes”, the Darwin park and the lesser-known antique gardens.
An original approach: “bioentertainment”
The Biodiversity Festival, held each year by the Montpellier municipality, is a meeting ground for the public and various players associated with biodiversity (research Institutes, associations…). Links between arts and sciences are also quite in favour, and interactions with the scene are growing ever stronger; accordingly, since 2011, researchers stage biodiversity at “The Little Theater of Biodiversity”
Another pedagogical approach: learning how to prospect, inventory, measure, observe, describe, classify, and comprehend diversity, classification, evolution, all this with the aid of a collection of cuddly toys. This is the challenge issued since 2010 by the UM2 section for scientific culture.
Mediation, culture and science
The scientific mediator is a broker of knowledge but also of passion, sensitivity, poetry…Cultural events concerning cultural heritage, ethnology, the history of techniques, etc. are an integral part of scientific culture dissemination. Spaces of dialogs and exchanges are still to be built and, as stated by French physicist Jean-Marc Levy-Leblond, it is urgent to “put science in culture”…