January 4, 2023
In this newsletter: ASPAC 2023 AMELs and 3 letters from National Science Museum in Daejeon, South Korea
Welcome to the start of a new year for all of us where we have a fresh chance to be creative to refresh an old world! To start our 2023, we want to confirm what the ASPAC leadership has announced in the last Annual Conference in Bursa Turkey last October 2022: We will experiment with having our next Annual Conference in 2024 in National Science Museum in Gwacheon, South Korea instead of 2023. For 2023, we will instead organize 2 ASPAC Masterclasses for Emerging Leaders (AMEL) for members of our teams in different roles across ASPAC. We will start announcing the details of these AMELs in February. For this January issue, we want to send you 3 introductory letters from the team of an ASPAC family member, National Science Museum in Daejeon, South Korea to give you a taste of what they find important in evolving what science engagement means for institutions like ours. The first is on their flagship International Symposium of Science Museum which they have been holding yearly since 2011 with regional and global speakers. The second is on the new visual identity for NSM - an exercise which all of us do and therefore can learn from one another. The last one is on NSM’s exhibition support for the launch of South Korea’s first lunar orbiter.
Three Letters from the National Science Museum of South Korea (Daejeon)
ISSM in NSM (Daejeon, South Korea)
by Jihye Lim.
Hello, ASPAC community! I am in charge of special exhibition planning and ISSM at the National Science Museum of Korea. The International Symposium of Science Museum (ISSM) is held every year as an event for science museums around the world, so we hope you can participate, especially when it is also available online. Last year, it was held last Nov 3-4 and was on Citizen Participation and Science Museums. ASPAC will always be announcing ISSM details so I hope you will stay tuned for this to learn more about it.
I also participated in the AMEL workshop in 2020, and I am so grateful that I was able to meet good colleagues from other science museums, share ideas, and do fun events including Share-2-Learn webninar. I hope we can collaborate more in ASPAC community in the future.
Science Museum for All By Juha Lee, art/design & science researcher I want to start a connection with you through this newsletter. I am interested in offering visitors experiences by combining digital media and experimental attempt of science & art for a “Science Museum for All,” to make people feel closer to science through art. With this opportunity, I will tell you about NSM's story, and we can start new connections in the near future. My main concern is how to enhance and enrich visitors' experience for the all generations. For this, we blur the boundary between art and science and actively apply advanced digital media technology. We also focus on developing universal designs for overall physical spaces, cognitive content, online experiences, and all other visitor interaction points. The design discourse for better accessibility includes both physical and non-physical aspects. If all visitors can comfortably and safely enjoy our science museum, then the interest in science increases and sci-culture will likely spread to the public. We believe our attempts will contribute to building an inclusive science museum. To do this, we organized a science museum council of the national science museum in Korea, and discussed universal design issues leading to the new visual identity of NSM. The National Science Museum established a visual identity (VI) that embodies the vision and values of our institution. It also organizes the visual elements so that the visitors will find it easier to read and find meaningful and relevant. The publication of our VI guidelines is aimed towards an inclusive science museum, increasing accessibility for all as well as making information more digestible to the public. The identity of our museum is now delivered through a unified visual image. By sharing our experience of how we developed our VI system, I am really interested on how other ASPAC members are enhancing their visitor experience through visual identity and/or other approaches. I hope we can have more sharing of practices on this aspect of science engagement.
Fly Me to the Moon: South Korea’s First Lunar Orbiter By Cheolhee Kim, Physics researcher 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, 0, Liftoff!! A few months ago(5th Aug.), Korea’s first lunar orbiter called ‘Danuri’(Officially known as the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter) successfully launched from the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Danuri will arrive at the moon on a 135 day journey. Then it will orbit for a year revolving a 12 times a day at 100 km above the lunar surface. If Danuri successfully reaches the moon and begins missions, Korea will be the 7th country in the world to explore the moon. So we held a special exhibition to support Danuri’s successful missions and meet the public’s interest. You can know everything about Danuri with its 6 payloads to perform scientific missions and take a look at the efforts made so far to go to the moon through various contents such as launch vehicle, spacesuit, and lunar rock etc. The lunar rock is one of those brought by Apollo 17. The spacesuit is the one worn by Korea's first astronaut, Dr. Soyeon Yi, in space. Many people know about the Danuri and praying for success mission through this special exhibition. Now Korea has the plan for moon landing in 2031 from the beginning of the Danuri this year. NSM will continue to support this space mission with exhibition. We want to introduce other space project together.
Post your events on FB: Any ASPAC member can post their events and offerings in the ASPAC FB page. That will be the best platform for all our simultaneous announcements. However, should there be an event that you need the ASPAC leadership to officially endorse and solicit participation in, please click here to email details to the current Executive Director.
OH and IF YOU LOVE TO WRITE...:
Whatever your role in your organization, if you love to write, please send me your article on whatever it is you think would be worthwhile to share with ASPAC. I cannot predict or limit what that will be as there are so many connections between our work and the rest of what others in the world are doing, This is especially ripe in these strangest of times. e are excited to see your insights! Please send me your piece and we will see how it fits in our ASPAC human story. We are excited to unearth the evolving pool of ASPAC writers! Thank you!