Science festivals have become common enough that it’s worth asking a basic question: why do people actually attend them, and does anything come of it beyond a fun afternoon?
Researchers Eric Jensen and Nicola Buckley studied this directly, surveying and interviewing visitors at a large UK science festival. Their findings, published in the journal Public Understanding of Science, point to something specific: visitors consistently said the most valuable part of the experience was the chance to interact directly with real researchers, not just look at displays. The most commonly reported outcome afterward was increased curiosity about a new area of science, formed in what visitors themselves described as a socially enjoyable setting rather than a classroom one.
Scale matters too. The USA Science & Engineering Festival, first held in 2010, drew around 500,000 people to a two-day event on the National Mall in its inaugural year, with over 550 science and engineering organizations taking part. By 2016, exhibitor participation had grown to more than 1,000 organizations, and the event has sustained attendance above 365,000 across its later editions. Growth wasn’t only in total numbers: the festival’s student-focused preview day saw attendance more than double between 2010 and 2012, then grow another 30% by 2014.
Put together, this evidence explains why formats like the Innovation Festival and Innovation Playground at IISE 2026 are built the way they are: around direct contact with scientists and hands-on activity, rather than static exhibits behind glass. Sessions like Meet the People Behind the Breakthrough, or the Robot Arena and Kids Inventors Lab in the Innovation Playground, aren’t add-ons to make a science expo more entertaining. They are the part of the format that the research says actually produces the outcome organizers care about: a visitor leaving more curious about science than when they walked in, and more willing to come back to something like it again.
Sources:
- PubMed – Why people attend science festivals: Interests, motivations and self-reported benefits of public engagement with research (Jensen & Buckley): https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25414922/
- Wikipedia – USA Science and Engineering Festival: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USA_Science_and_Engineering_Festival