2020
2020
Since 2015, we have been supporting the communication team of the Villeneuve d'Ascq Science Forum, a centre for scientific, technical and industrial culture managed by Le Nord department. Temporary exhibitions, a planetarium, a science "investigation" area and a documentary resource centre are on offer. The Forum also carries out many cultural activities outside its walls.
Through posters and other communication media, we propose to stage scientific experiments and discoveries in everyday life situations, or in sets made of paper.
Associating sketches with major discoveries creates a certain poetry and plays down our relationship with science. For example, Darwin is reprimanded because he plays the monkey, Copernicus because he plays with his flashlight and Archimedes because he won't get out of his bath!
Indirectly, it is the freedom to experiment at the Forum that is put forward. The baseline "Experience Science" supports this idea and positions the Forum as a place of pleasure, discovery and mediation open to all.
The team tells you more about the project.
Analysis and anecdotes...in French.
Imagining, for a brief moment, what the parents of the young Freud, Copernicus or Newton might have said when the latters, with their exploratory spirit, came to question science. "Darwin, stop acting like a monkey" "Copernicus, turn out the light!"... reprimands that may seem reasonable to adults, but when they are overcome can lead to revolutionizing the world. Scientific knowledge comes first and foremost from empirical experience of the world. By inviting children to come and experiment with science, even if it means contradicting their parents, the Science Forum offers them a wonderful opportunity to open up to the world and explore its wonders.
The Science Forum Communication Context
Until now, the Science Forum's communication policy has been oriented towards promoting flagship events (the Plateau and Petit Forum exhibitions, etc.). It was essentially an event-driven or fragmented communication about special offers. Also some offers were not very visible, not well communicated (e.g. the planetarium). This communication was based on a strong graphic charter dating back to the origin of the Science Forum (1996), which has undergone adjustments, or even drifts, until it was no longer legible.
The Forum wished to communicate more widely about the institution, to make its identity and vocation understood, and to share its values. To do this, it wanted to produce two strong supports for this institutional communication: a programme document and a generic film. This communication is firstly aimed at a visiting public: general public (families and schools).
Some ambitions...
The Science Forum is a structure that may seem complex: a mosaic of activities, proposals and services for various audiences. In seeking to harmonize all communication, the aim was to make all actions more legible.
Identification with science might seem an obstacle for their audiences, but the Forum is a structure that is accessible and interesting for all. It was therefore a question of not neglecting the scientific field within the communication itself, while working in a didactic and attractive way to reach all audiences.
Finally, the originality of the Forum, which is based on human relations through a very present human mediation, invites us to think of a communication that can feature "real people" (and not image banks of young people!).