Dear ASPAC Family,
How have you all been? We hope this letter reaches you in good spirits.
We recognize that these are extraordinarily tough times for our members and our network, as well as other science center/museum networks around the world.
Your ASPAC network would like to help all of our members cope by providing opportunities to learn from each other's organization, generation, or even dreams. To make these happen, here are the decisions/projects that we have rolled out for the rest of the year that we hope could help you:
1. WAIVING OF 2020 DUES FOR ALL MEMBERS
The past few months, most of our members needed to focus on how to survive and help as our societies deal with the pandemic. Our network would like to ease a little bit of your burden by waiving the membership (full, associate or sustaining members) dues for 2020. This means the following:
For the active members (who have paid dues till 2019), you do NOT have to pay membership dues for 2020 but you have to pay in early 2021; and
For those who have paid their 2020 dues, we shall credit your payment so you will not pay dues for 2021.
2. ASPAC MASTERCLASS FOR EMERGING LEADERS (AMEL) VIA ZOOM on AUG 19-21, 2020. The ASPAC Masterclass for Emerging Leaders AMEL) will take place on Aug 19-21 (8:30AM to 4:30PM GMT+8). We can accommodate 100 participants. We have about 80 members so we will give priority to have one representation for each member. Before you send your representative emerging leader, please make sure that that participant would be able to attend the full 3 days. This is a FIRST for ASPAC and we are very excited to lay out a very dynamic and hopefully, transformative masterclass for our emerging leaders. Our workshop facilitator will be Matthew Finch, who was our wonderful keynote last September 2019 in Queensland. We will be sending more infomation as well as registration details by the second week of July.
3. WEBINARS FOR ASPAC
Your ASPAC leadership is also happy to announce that in the next few months, we have virtual meets that would keep our sense of family in this network. These are:
A series of free Webinars hosted by various ASPAC members. The first one will be a Webinar on 'Science Communication in Viral Times" that will be led by Song Choon Lee of Science Center Singapore on July 9. We will be sending the link to register to the Webinar by July 2.
A Cross Network Forum Series (hosted jointly with ASTC, REDPOP, SAASTEC, ECSITE and NAMES) with CEOs are being scheduled in September, October, November. This will be on topics that have come to the fore especially because of the pandemic. The exact dates are currently being finalized with the other networks and we will let you know of the dates and the links where you could register to join.
4. CONTINUING UPDATE OF YOUR INSTITUTION'S STATUS IN VIRAL TIMES.
We have been sharing how institutions in our network have re-shaped the way they deliver science to audiences and some have found ways to collaborate with other centers. We will continue to do this and we appeal to your sense of family to share what your organization has been up to, to others, by filling up or updating this Googlesheet so we can share it on the ASPAC website and FB page. 5. The SCIENCE CENTER WORLD SUMMIT (SCWS 2020) HAS BEEN POSTPONED AT A LATER DATE YET TO BE SET. In the meantime, the International Program Committee (IPC) members are discussing the interim activities that could take place that will lead us to the SCWS. We will keep you posted as soon as plans are in place. We hope that the measures and projects above will inspire you to cope in these times and even inspire all of us to help create an even better normal. Thank you so much for your time, especially to those institutions who have reached out to other institutions in our network in these very special times. Our friendships, across our shared mission in science engagement, matter now, more than ever.