The 18th Rome Science Festival closes with 23,000 attendees

A huge audience of 23,000 attendees is the one that followed the events of the 18th edition of the Rome Science Festival, which returned in April after the previous edition ended last November. Produced by Fondazione Musica per Roma with the design partnership of Codice Edizioni, produced with ASI – Italian Space Agency and INFN – National Institute of Nuclear Physics and with the participation of numerous research organizations and scientific and cultural institutions, the weeklong festival told the story of the relationship between science and imagination, one of the most powerful tools that allows us to conceive works of art, new technologies and enables us to find solutions to everyday problems, the main theme of the 18th edition that ended yesterday, which sold out in the in-person activities for schools, and saw the halls of the Auditorium Parco della Musica “Ennio Morricone” once again host science enthusiasts. Streaming events for both schools and conferences were also very well attended, with a peak of 70.000 views about for the event, in collaboration with National Geographic Italy, by photographer, American artist and National Geographic Explorer Stephen Wilkes, starring in a dialogue about the beauty of our planet and our relationship with the environment.

“The Rome Science Festival, more than other similar events, now performs a mixed function of popularization on the one hand and in-depth study and debate in the scientific community on the other. This double register, which guarantees speakers and topics of the highest level and great audience participation, has been possible thanks to the increasingly close collaboration and partnership with leading Italian and European scientific bodies, which will be further strengthened in the coming years. This is the main strength that makes our Festival unique,” said the CEO of Fondazione Musica per Roma Daniele Pittèri.

Great appreciation for the educational activities: over the course of the Numerous appointments for schools, from all over Italy, including workshops and teacher training courses, schools with 7,000 students enthusiastically participated in the workshops and lectures that sold out during the four-day festival, as well as the workshops dedicated to families throughout the weekend. A great achievement, testifying to the deep interest in science and its many branches, across generations. The rich program of events, with scientific coordination by Michele Bellone and executive coordination by Claudia Ribet, offered more than 400 appointments and educational activities, 5 exhibits, 4 special events, and 16 scientific and cultural partners. Countless suggestions and insights were offered by the more than 120 guests, from all over the world, brilliant minds and professionals from the scientific and cultural world, national and international.

Among the best-attended events was the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics conference. Giorgio Parisi, who together with architect and designer Massimiliano Fuksas, opened the Festival with a meeting with schools on the relationship between science, art and creativity curated by INFN, the event of Amedeo Balbi, who along with Mario Cosmo, director Science and Research at ASI, dialogued on imagining new worlds, the lectio magistralis of British physicist and philosopher Julian Barbour dedicated to the relationship between mathematics and imagination, the lecture by Francis Coaston the social and scientific imaginaries that have arisen in California and the crisis of the American dream, the theoretical physics conference Lisa Randall who recounted current research developments, explaining how experiments today are expanding the frontiers of knowledge, the event with astrophysicist and writer Licia Troisi which together with Lucrezia Ercoli, inspired by movies, TV series and music, explored ideas and archetypes of the fantastic.

Large audience turnout, with about 3,000 in attendance, also in the events with authors, at workshops and exhibitions organized in various places around the city during the week by Biblioteche di Roma, Bioparco, Planetarium di Roma Capitale, Macro, in collaboration with Municipio II Roma Capitale, Explora Children’s Museum of Rome, Copernican Astronomical Museum of the National Institute of Astrophysics. “We celebrated the 18th birthday of the Festival of Science with an edition of great quality, where the frontier spirit of research represented by many guests from many countries was combined with the strong involvement of a wide audience at all levels, especially young people. Our event once again proved capable of gathering the stimuli coming from the scientific community, represented by a network of excellence of Bodies and Institutions, and of interpreting with a critical and constructive spirit the fundamental questions that our time confronts us with,” said the director of the Rome Science Festival Vittorio Bo.

The next nineteenth edition will return in April 2024.