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The first EuroPAWS Awards celebrated in London and Brussels, bring the "Oscars" to science and technology on TV
On 5th November at the sumptuous Institution of Electrical Engineers in London there was a gala event for presentation of the EuroPAWS prizes. Two days later at the prestigious Musées royaux d'Art et d'Histoire in Brussels there was a further presentation of the results of the EuroPAWS competition. Guests at these events included such luminaries as Glenys Kinnock, MEP (UK), Mercedes Echerrer, MEP (Austria), Sir David Brown, President of the IEE and many others. EuroScience was closely involved in the project as a member of the organising consortium and played a key role in its success.
The winners of the two "MIDAS" Prizes (sponsored by the European Science Foundation) for television drama bearing on science and technology broadcast in Europe in the last two years were;
v For the best science or technology based factual story, LONGITUDE from Firstsight Films and Channel 4 (UK).
v For the best fiction drawing in a significant way on science or technology, shared between SOPHIE ROUSSEAU - LA VIE AVANT TOUT from Exilene Films and TF1 (France) and NEWBORN from Stone City Films and Channel 4 (UK).
In addition awards were made for the most promising two script treatments developed in the "New Ideas" element of EuroPAWS for future TV dramas bearing on science and technology to:
v Tin Kickers, a thriller by Bill Murphy, Ireland
v Mapping the invisible, a film script by Stephan Wakelam, UK
Guests saw excerpts of the winning TV dramas and live renditions of new script ideas. In Brussels the guest also debated with leading scientists, TV producers and scriptwriters about how the powerful medium of TV drama could be used by science and technology as a channel to a broad European public. The live presentations of the new scripts proved very popular in their own right as an art form, quite apart from the objective in showing them to give an insight into how a dramatic approach to a science/technology issue would look to a TV audience.
One might ask, why TV drama? Television drama is one of the most powerful means of communication, with an ability to project values in human terms in all walks of life, and it offers the public an opportunity to appreciate the impact of science and technology on everyday life. In addition it reaches an audience as large as that for news or sports programmes so the fundamental aim of EuroPAWS is to harness this power of television drama so as to enthuse broad swathes of our population with the interest, benefits and excitement of science and technology.
EuroPAWS, based on a succsseful UK concept is different from traditional public awareness events intended to have a direct impact on the limited public that actually attend. EuroPAWS can be thought of as a "meta-event" intended rather to leverage a channel of communications that if it can be successfully deployed in favour of public awareness of science, will have a very large impact indeed.
The Research Directorate of the Commission of the EU funded the project as one of seven projects in European Week of Science &Technology
(/scienceweek
). The week was part of a broader EU initiative to raise public awareness of science &technology and in particular to encourage young people to take an interest in science - not only as potential future scientists, technologists and engineers but also as better informed citizens. The other six projects included events in Manchester, Geneva, Florence, Uppsala, Tallinn, Madrid, Munich, Thessaloniki, Barcelona, Porto and Rome. The range of topics dealt with was very broad, from miniaturised systems and biotechnology to renewable energy and life elswhere in the Universe.
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