Inspiring Australia

How are we Inspiring Australia?

Public engagement with the sciences is essential to achieving an innovative society with a technologically skilled workforce, a scientifically literate community and well informed decision makers.

Now is the time to motivate and inspire Australians! The Australian Government, in collaboration with Australia’s top thinkers in science and innovation, teachers, journalists and other science communicators have developed a national strategy for engagement with the sciences. The Inspiring Australia strategy, released in February 2010, aims to build a strong, open relationship between science and society, underpinned by effective communication of science and its uses.

To see the goals of the strategy achieved, partnerships between science, industry, community organisations and governments throughout Australia are essential. We invite you to get involved and benefit from all that Inspiring Australia has to offer.

Inspiring Australia has hit the ground running. Since February we’ve been building partnerships and developing activities to engage Australia in the sciences. An Inspiring Australia State and Territory Officers Working Group has been established to enhance collaboration between governments. This has already resulted in the joint funding of Inspiring Australia officers in a number of states and territories, jointly funded events around Australia and the drafting of a Framework of Principles for Science Communication Initiatives.

National Science Week, now under the banner of Inspiring Australia, was a huge success in August this year with 1.6 million people participating and the prestigious Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science will continue with announcements to be made on November 17.

Two groups of experts have also been created, one looking at ways to strengthen the media’s role in communicating science, and the other establishing a system for evaluating science engagement activities. Both working groups will deliver their final reports in November.

We’re also developing a newsletter, so please contact us if you would like to subscribe: inspiring.australia@innovation.gov.au.

Our goal is to use the broad outcomes and recommendations of Inspiring Australia to drive a national, coordinated venture to communicate science and develop a scientifically engaged Australia. The federal government has promised $21 million over three years to this venture and we are looking forward to you joining the strategy.

For more information about the Inspiring Australia initiative or to get involved, please contact inspiring.australia@innovation.gov.au

Australian Science Communicators welcomes Inspiring Australia, a report which set the agenda for science communication for the nation. - Dr Jesse Shore, President, Australian Science Communicators