Café Scientifique is an international phenomenon, with events taking place at hundreds of cafés, bars, theatres, restaurants and even bookshops - anywhere that’s has a casual and friendly atmosphere. The relaxed and informal discussions give armchair science buffs the opportunity to meet like minded people interested in science over a beer or coffee, and to meet and talk to experts in their chosen field. Not wanting to be behind any self respecting leading city, Liverpool has a growing list of Café Scientifique events, and the best thing is they’re free.
The Liverpool Café Scientifique has been running since autumn 2004 at the Everyman Cafe on the 1st floor of the Blackwell's Bookshop on Brownlow Hill, discussing controversial subjects as diverse as cloning, depression, the evolutionary theory and exploring the universe! Each session a leading expert in their field is invited to give a short presentation on a subject, laying out theories and ideas for the group to discuss over a glass of wine, tea or coffee for around an hour or so. An emphasis is put on group participation in the events, and it moves away from the lecture type feel of a university or college, with people free to ask any question no matter how silly - rather than a specialist group and high academic speak! The type of people at the events vary as well, being near the university campus it does tend to have a few students, but also non-academic’s such as engineers and technicians, book lovers who find out about the events through Blackwells, and pretty much anyone from the general public! | "...public who really feel that they’re in a position where they just want to come and listen and learn to something and have a good cup of coffee!" | | Rob Black, one of the organisers of Cafe Scientifique in Liverpool |
The Café (as it’s affectionately known) has started a new series of monthly Café Sci-Art events at the Tate Liverpool Café through November until January 2006 exploring the relationship between art and science and how one affects the other. It looks at issues such as creativity and if there is ever anything ‘new’? Also issues over reforming and re-imagining the body and the effects of mood and emotion on perception. We spoke to one of the organisers of Café Scientifique, Rob Black Do people have to know a lot about Science to come along? Rob Black: “What’s great about the Café is that even if you’re not remotely connected with the subject you can come along and really learn something, and we’re in a great position where we can attract the very best scientists from Liverpool and else where as well, for example next month (December) we have Dr Silvia Gonzalez, from the Department of Archaeology at John Moores University, and she’s talking about footprints that were found fossilized in America that turned out to be 40,000 years ago, and even though myself I don’t know much about archaeology I’ll find it a great way to learn and really engage with it. “The great thing about both Café Scientifique and Café Sci-Art is that it will make these subjects appeal to people outside of the disciplines, so not necessarily the arty crowd or the sciencey crowd, you’ll have just members of the general public who really feel that they’re in a position where they just want to come and listen and learn to something, and have a good cup of coffee!” What’s the Blackwell's Café like? Rob Black: “We run the Café at Blackwell's because it’s a really chilled out environment, it’s a lovely café they do excellent coffees there… we approached the manager Wendy Durne and she was just very open, ‘yep this sounds like a great idea’, and from there it was just a matter of really organising a monthly speaker.”
What type of speakers do you get at the Café? “The Café really offers is that we can get leading speakers, because it’s people from two universities organising this event so it can really appeal for the best quality speakers, real subject leaders, for example our first one featured Prof. Richard Bentall who’s a leading name in Schizophrenia from the University of Manchester.” How do the discussions work?
 | | Cafe Scientifique @ Blackwells cafe |
Rob Black: “We move beyond a simple question and answer structure in the discussion and I find my role when chairing the discussion is to in some senses say as little as possible, and there’s nothing better, and it’s been happening increasingly recently when the talk has finished someone will just pipe up, almost interrupt me with a question which they’ve been dying to ask, and then someone in the audience will either disagree or have another slant on it, and you really see a lovely dynamic building in the room and you only have to look around at the people nodding and smiling to see that something really nice is happening here.” We spoke to some of the people at one of the recent events to see what they thought: Neil Harrison: "I've been to quite a few events before at Blackwell's bookshop, they're subjects the general public would be interested in and that provoke dialogue. It's a serious academic discussion but at a level that everyone can understand, and it's informal, you can have a wine or a beer and it's a very relaxed atmosphere, you're not being lectured at, you're engaging in a relaxed discussion." Susan Giles: "The speakers are people we really want to talk to, we had Richard Bentall who came to talk about Schizophrenia, a wide range of people come from outside the university as well. The Sci-Art events have been good, it's an interesting link because art wants to represent science but science wants to explain art rather than represent it. I think most scientists are very creative and have creative thoughts." Details The Cafe Scientifique events run monthly at the Everyman Cafe on the 1st floor of the Blackwells’ Bookshop on Brownlow Hill. The dates are generally the 3rd Tuesday in the month, and are free. The Cafe Sci-Art events are running monthly from November - January at varying dates. Tickets are priced at £4 (£3 concessions) or £7 for the series – booking recommended. Full details of all events can be found at the Cafe Scientifique website below.
(ADDED NOTE: the event on Tuesday 15 November - 'The Oldest American? Footprints from the Past' by Dr Silvia Gonzalez, Department of Archaeology has been rescheduled for 22nd November). | 
