Bright Club - six months of science and beyond 2010 (360G-Wellcome-092346_Z_10_Z)

Bright Club is a monthly variety night that combines science, comedy, art, the humanities, music, and other intellectual endeavours. It represents a new and successful format developed by UCL under the Beacons for Public Engagement programme. Bright Club has been so successful with its target audience of 20-40 year old Londoners not connected to research that there is scope to expand its premise significantly, and to take the science and other research of this university and others to a nationwide audience with a similar demographic. In order to expand the reach of Bright Club we are asking for funds for a variety of non-London projects. These are to take science into the Brighton and Edinburgh comedy festivals, to provide a weekly podcast and to allow us to help other cities and universities start their own Bright Clubs. Bright Club is built on the belief that engagement programmes with the longest-lasting legacies are built locally, and owned by local researchers and publics. In this we follow the Café Scientifique model, albeit updating it in a number of ways, aiming for a different audience and including 21st-century online elements.