Collaborating with local events to engage a wide public demographic in photonics outreach

Collaboration with local events can provide an effective means to engage a non-science aware audience with photonics. The University of Southampton’s Lightwave and Light Express outreach teams collaborated with Light-up Trails at Hillier Gardens to deliver a series of photonics activities in the local area including laser shows at a secondary school, and ‘scientists in the garden’. Demonstrators focused on explaining key concepts, including reflection and diffraction, and linked these to important applications of photonics including fibre optics. Audience feedback via quizzes and word-of-mouth enabled identification of strengths and weaknesses of the activities for different demographics, informing future outreach events.