Therefore the two main networks grouping science museums and science centers NAMES (North Africa and Middle East Science centers), ECSITE and some of their members (Science City of Naples, Biblioteca Alexandrina Planetarium Science Center, Scientific Center of Kuwait, Museum Sciences in Trento, Consorcio Parque de las Ciencias in Granada, the Natural History Museum in London and Paris Universcience and Universcience Partners), have launched a project to create a Summer School of Scientific Communication for the Euro-Mediterranean and the Middle East area.
The project was established in February 2012 after a meeting held in Città della Scienza which was attended by several members of both networks, drawing up a draft collaborative project.
The official agreement was signed on June 2 in Toulouse (France), during the annual conference of ECSITE and contemplates the realization of the first edition of the Summer School in the autumn 2013.
The summer school is addressed to the staff of science centers and museums of science and the existing promoters (universities, local authorities and associations) of new activities in the field of scientific communication.
The objective of the training program is to train participants with management skills for science centers, scientific and cultural organizations giving them strong stock of competences and methodologies.
This project responds to the growing number of science centers and science communication activities around the Mediterranean and especially in the Middle East. The Summer school will reinforce their capacities of development, but it aims also to strengthen dialogue and exchange among these institutions with the scope to build a growing community of actors in the region and to maximize their potential impact as agent of change for societies.
A project that aims to act not only in our limited local areas (as shown by our common effort in the educational field and in cultural promotion), but also globally, because they are involved with science and technology, which have always been the result of supranational exchanges and cross-fertilization, but are nowadays the result of working methods and customs.
