Get involved with public engagement and outreach
Learn about public engagement with the RSC and how you can get involved in engaging different audiences with chemistry
Whether you are new to outreach, or an experienced practitioner, we are here to support you to engage different audiences with the chemical sciences.
On this page
What is public engagement?
'Public engagement' is an umbrella term that describes the variety of ways organisations, teams and individuals seek to involve the public in their work. At the RSC, public engagement is defined as an activity that aims to do one or more of the following:
- Inspire, involve and inform the public
- Actively listen to the public’s views, concerns, and insights
- Work in partnership with the public to solve problems, drawing on each other’s expertise
We use the term outreach to define an activity that inspires young people, along with their families, when making their education and career choices.
Why does it matter?
Public engagement and outreach can play a vital role in the chemical science ecosystem by:
- supporting a diverse chemical science community in the student body and the workforce, through schools and community participation and outreach
- improving policy development through public voice
- strengthening research and innovation through public participation
By bringing the chemical sciences closer to people’s lives and people’s lives closer to the chemical sciences, our public engagement and outreach work contributes to strategic priorities in education, voice and influence, inclusion and diversity and sustainability, and enables RSC members to achieve public engagement and outreach related goals.
Engaging with the public has really helped me to grow my confidence, including in seeking and processing feedback from my peers on how to approach different people and describe things in different ways.
Johanna Fish AMRSC; Chemical biology PhD student, University of Southampton; RSC Broadening Horizons 2022-23 Cohort member; RSC Inclusion and Diversity Committee observer 2023-24
What does it look like?
RSC members and grant holders engage with the public through several RSC funds and programmes. We work with members and partners to support best practice public engagement and outreach through training, funding, guidance and evidence.
Discovery Planet CIC
Since 2014, Discovery Planet CIC (RSC Outreach Fund grant holders, 2024 RSC Inclusion and Diversity Prize winners) has been working to engage their community, in the heart of Thanet, with how chemistry is contributing to developing responses to global challenges, and routes into the chemical sciences. Over twenty years, Discovery Planet CIC has engaged over 25,000 people in an area containing multiple deprived neighbourhoods through workshops, events and exhibitions. They have employed innovative approaches to engaging special educational needs schools and unaccompanied child refugees.
Poisons in the Garden
In 2022, the RSC North East Region Analytical Community was awarded an RSC Outreach Fund grant to develop and deliver an event in collaboration with Alnwick Garden, “Poisons in the Garden”. They went on to win the RSC Inspirational Committee Award in 2023. Through the development of new and engaging resources (including videos, chromatography activities, story boards and a sensory lab), over 2,200 visitors were engaged over one weekend in July 2022. The story boards created during the project have an ongoing legacy and are being used as part of the Alnwick Garden Drugs Education Programme for young people.
ChemBAM
ChemBAM is an award-winning outreach project established in 2017 to increase the public’s confidence in discussing chemistry. The ChemBAM website is home to a whole range of free resources, experiments and interactive activities to support teachers and learners. In addition to the website, the ChemBAM team have delivered teacher CPD sessions, workshops in schools and created ChemBOXes. In 2023, ChemBAM was awarded the RSC Inclusion and Diversity Prize for their work in developing chemistry activity for people with visual impairments, learn more about this project here
Is it for me?
Our members get involved with public engagement for various reasons from enjoyment and a desire to inspire, to skills development (including communication, project management, grant writing and collaboration) and gaining new experiences.
Through engaging with the public, I developed the ability to communicate complex chemistry topics to people with varying levels of scientific understanding.
Tara Sobiech; Chemistry Research Intern, Oxford Nanopore Technologies; Affiliate RSC member; RSC Broadening Horizons 2023-24 cohort. Tara Sobiech headshot
Being able to speak in front of large audiences and to interact with all ages and abilities also helps me improve my teaching skills, which are essential for my career as a university lecturer.
Graeme Turnbull MRSC CChem; Senior Lecturer, Department of Applied Sciences, Northumbria University; Secretary, RSC Newcastle and North East Coast Local Section
How can I learn more?
We have supported members in education, academia, industry and the third sector at all career stages to lead, develop and deliver public engagement. Wherever you are in your public engagement journey, from taking your first steps, to being an experienced practitioner, our training, funding, guidance and evidence can support you.
Join us to get access to our range of support services and resources and find out about other benefits of our memberships.
If you are still not sure where to go from here, don't worry! Get in touch with us, we would be happy to hear from you and help support you however we can.
As an RSC member you can access resources and webinars to support public engagement skills development. Explore our learning and development webinars available in our Members Area; they cover a range of topics including:
- resource and audience identification
- identifying impact outcomes and outputs
- approaches to evaluation
- the role of public voice in policymaking
- engaging the public through media
Volunteering in public engagement and outreach is a great way to apply new skills, build confidence and gain experience. We have a range of opportunities open to members via partner organisations and funded projects. To browse the latest opportunities, visit the Volunteering Opportunities Board in our Members Area.
If you are an RSC member working in education:
- explore Teach Chemistry
- sign-up to our Education newsletters
- contact your local RSC Education Coordinator
This fund is available members, non-members, individuals and organisations to enable you to run chemistry-based public and schools engagement activities. If you are looking for funding for an activity in the UK or Ireland (up to £10,000) see our Outreach Fund guidance and deadlines to find out more and see if your idea is eligible.
Resources and projects
Each of us has our own reasons for wanting to communicate chemistry:
- Do you believe that a supply of skilled chemists can secure our future prosperity?
- Do you think that chemistry should inform the way people vote or the things they buy?
- Do you need to engage with non-chemists to help your career?
- Or do you just want to share the wonder of chemistry with the world?
We have got the evidence to demonstrate that our activities make a difference. If you want to get involved, then we can get you started and help you develop your skills.
Wherever possible, our work to engage people with chemistry is grounded in solid social science. Where that is not possible, we support programmes that will generate the necessary evidence.
Our long-term ambition is to shift the image of chemistry and raise the profile of chemists. Before we can try to do that it is critically important that we understand public attitudes towards chemistry and find out about people's knowledge, interest and engagement with the work that we all do. We must build our understanding of public opinion and exposure to chemistry.
While there is extensive literature about the public image of science, there’s little data specifically on chemistry. To unlock new insights we commissioned the social research company TNS BMRB to research current public attitudes, awareness, interest and engagement toward chemistry in the UK. Our study included a number of qualitative workshops and a nationally representative face-to-face public survey. Read about our research on the Nature website.
Presenting the findings of the first national, in-depth study on how the UK public thinks and feels about chemistry, chemists and chemicals.
Reports
Download communication toolkit
Data tables
Our five-year, £1 million Chemistry for All (CfA) project is exploring and addressing the barriers to progression in chemistry, including progression to undergraduate study. The project is providing a longitudinal programme of activities in schools, in contrast to the more common one-off chemistry enhancement and enrichment activities.
The university outreach programmes are run by teams with innovative approaches to widening participation in chemistry: Liverpool John Moores; Nottingham Trent; and Reading and Southampton in partnership. Each university is working with schools from local areas with low university applications.
A parallel research project run by a team from UCL Institute of Education is exploring the impact of the intervention programmes on the students who take part. Two cohorts of students have been followed from Year 8, to finish in 2019 when the first cohort are in Year 12.
Together with 15 other organisations, we are researching how best to support public engagement with research. To help us understand the landscape, we are re-running the 2006 Royal Society Survey of factors affecting science communication to establish what has changed in the sector over the last 10 years, and to provide a benchmark for future developments.
The organisations involved are research funders including the Wellcome Trust, all four UK Funding Councils, and Research Councils UK, alongside learned societies such as ourselves, the Royal Society, and the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The report was published in December 2015.