Green Man Festival

Music fans engaged with freshwater fisheries research from the University of Southampton through an interactive ‘Bringing Research to Life’ Roadshow engagement tent within Einstein’s Garden at Green Man Festival in August 2018. The tent had hundreds of visitors over the three-day festival, and was part of a wider outreach presence by several national scientific organisations and some other universities who had all traveled to Wales for the festival. Representatives from the International Centre for Ecohydraulics Research engaged with nearly 600 festival goers to partake in the fish passage marble run as they showcased research from the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment at last summer’s festival. The activity - which encouraged participants to restore a freshwater river encompassing hydropower turbines - challenged visitors to identify issues with large scale fish migration and sustainable infrastructure systems. This introduced the topic of fisheries management opening up scope for in depth conversations across a range of demographics. Some festival goers were so interested in the topics addressed that they returned to the tent with friends and family, multiple times over the festival period.