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Guardian OnLine, Thursday, January 2, 1997 OFF LINE Michael Kenward It is all over for another year. Time to take down the decorations and lay off the booze. Morecambe and Wise can return to the television archives. After it has fulfilled its part in the Christmas story, the Royal Institution also tends to hibernate for the rest of the year. This year, things could be different. In 1997 the Royal Institution of Great Britain, to give the RI its full title, will learn of the fate of its bid for lottery money. Along with the British Association for the Advancement of Science (BA), the RI has asked for £10 million or so from the Millennium Commission. The RI and BA want to create a "science forum for the new millennium". The mission of the project "is to create and sustain a world class forum for enhancing awareness, appreciation and understanding of science, engineering and technology." This is a bit vague. Apart from a chance to tart up the RI's crumbling premises, it isn't all that clear what the pair want to do with all this money. The RI wants Albemarle Street to become "a national focus for bringing science to the public". Some observers wonder how the RI can hope to do this when it rarely bothers to tell the world about its own research. The BA and RI, along with the Royal Society, were the founders of the Committee on the Public Understanding of Science (Copus). The BA has come a long way in the decade of public understanding. The RI is little more than a venue for the annual Christmas lectures - given this year by the palaeontologist Simon Conway Morris. Shell picks up the tab and the BBC does much of the organising, and then records the series in the RI's picturesque lecture theatre. This is where Humphry Davy and Michael Faraday did their thing nearly 200 years ago. Historic stuff, and one reason why 20 to 21 Albemarle Street, just off Piccadilly and a test tube's blast from Bond Street, is a Grade 1 listed building. The lecture theatre may be in reasonable shape, but behind the elegant facade, the RI's premises are a dump. The architects want to eliminate the accumulated carbuncles of more than a century. Up where the servants used to live, there is a suite of tatty laboratories. For Albemarle Street is not just a lecture theatre, it is also a working research establishment. Among scientists, the RI is mostly famous for its Friday evening discourses - the last outpost of the dinner jacket science lecture. These events allow scientists from the middle ranks of the profession to let their hair down and entertain an audience of semi-comatose individuals, most of whom are old enough to qualify for a bus pass. The submission to the Millennium Commission says "many notable scientific discoveries were made" in Albemarle Street. That's it then. Forget the fact that laboratories have changed over the past two centuries. Maybe the RI will give up 'stinks' (wet chemistry) but let's not go mad and turn the whole building over to the public. The BA has shown that you can do a lot to enhance the public understanding of science without owning so much as a Bunsen burner. Even the Royal Society, the MCC of science, joins in the fun without getting its hands dirty. But remove research and the RI is scrambling around for a role in life. So long as it doesn't get steamrollered by the RI, the BA could achieve more by moving out of the nasty office block it shares with English Heritage and into a venue with the latest presentation technology. Science itself could make much of a building with elements of the Groucho Club, a theatre, a cybercafe, somewhere to launch books and for technologically inclined companies to strut their stuff. So far science has received desultory treatment at the hands of the lottery, partly because the scientific community has yet to hone the begging skills that sustain other cultural activities. Museums with a scientific inclination have collected big bucks from the lottery, but that is mostly for preserving the past. The architects have some wonderful ideas for Albemarle Street. But if this is to be a home from home for the scientific community, and somewhere that does not frighten off ordinary people, then it would be a good idea to seek the views of those who would be a part of the forum. Maybe then the RI could devise a convincing mission statement. Michael Kenward is a science writer. He was one of the first members of Copus and a member of the joint Royal Institution-British Association task force that debated the future of the RI Front Page Biography Cuttings Science Writing Last update 19 January 1997 |
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Michael Kenward ©2000 Last changed 07 February 2008 |
