Designing a creative science experience : Focus on Ants

About the workshop

This practical, 2-hour online workshop is designed for anyone who wants to create more imaginative, engaging science experiences — whether you work in education, public engagement, museums, creative practice, community projects, or simply enjoy exploring new ideas.

To make the session hands-on and fun, we’ll use ants as our example topic — not because you need to know anything about ants, but because they offer a surprising, playful way to experiment with storytelling, behaviour, pattern, scale and interaction design.

The methods you learn can be applied to any science theme.

What we’ll do

Over the session, you will:

• Explore a simple, repeatable method for designing creative science experiences
• Learn how to turn scientific facts into story elements, encounters, moments, and activities
• Experiment with a live case study (ants!) to practise the process step-by-step
• Try practical design exercises you can re-use with different scientific topics
• Share ideas and get feedback in a supportive, imaginative environment

No background in biology or ants is needed — curiosity is enough.

Who is this for?

This workshop is ideal for:

• Educators and facilitators
• Museum and science centre staff
• Artists, designers and makers
• Public engagement and outreach professionals
• Early-career researchers wanting to communicate their science creatively
• Anyone interested in playful, hands-on methods for explaining scientific ideas

If you enjoy creative thinking and want a method you can take away and use again, this session is for you.

What you’ll take away

By the end, you will leave with:

• A practical framework for designing creative science experiences
• A set of ready-to-use exercises
• New ideas for bringing scientific topics to life
• Inspiration for your own projects, whether educational, artistic, or community-based

Why ants?

Ants are a brilliant case study:
they cooperate, build, communicate, navigate, farm, and adapt. Their behaviours open up rich creative possibilities — even if you’ve never been interested in ants before.

They’re just the vehicle for learning the method.
You can apply the same process to planets, plants, microbes, materials, energy — anything.

About the convenor
Dr Jessica Symons convenes creative, cross-disciplinary spaces where ideas, people and practices come together in unexpected ways. Through Visioning Lab, she brings scientists, artists, technologists and educators into dialogue, helping them develop new ways of understanding and communicating the world around us. Her convening style is practical, imaginative and highly participatory — making it easy for people to explore, experiment and co-create.