SpotOn NYC (SONYC) - Doodling Science

This post originates from the SpotOn site, which hosts all kinds of exciting and novel science, policy, outreach and tools posts relating to the SpotOn conferences in London and NYC. Perrin Ireland recently wowed delegates in New York with her sketches from science conferences. This popular new medium has generated a lot of online attention (#sciencescribe) and offers a fun new way to keep notes and memories from your conferencing experiences.

Februarys's SpotOn NYC (#SoNYC) event is hosted in association with the American Museum of Natural History as part of Social Media Week. The panel's focus will be on Telling Stories with Scientists, examining the various ways of communicating scientific research. In the build-up to the conversation we will be hosting a collection of blog posts from journalists, editors, scientists and science enthusiasts who will each share their experiences of communicating science through narrative. The posts will also cover the challenges faced in attempting to communicate difficult scientific subjects. You can follow the conversation using #smwScience and #SoNYC hashtags; feel free to join in and share your own experiences!

Perrin Ireland has been a doodler her entire life, a learner who visualizes concepts in order to understand them. She currently serves as Senior Science Communications Specialist at the Natural Resources Defense Council, where she helps tell the story of how science plays a part in NRDC's work.

My name is Perrin Ireland, and I'm a science scribe. I'm a visual learner. An idea isn't quite grounded for me until it's visualized. That's what I do for science: I try to ground, dissect, and examine scientific ideas with visual storytelling to provide easier access to science content. I'm the Science Communications Specialist for the Natural Resources Defense Council, where I work daily with scientists to share their stories with the public.

I studied human biology at Brown University, and was essentially an undercover artist in a science degree. Fellow students would approach me and ask for copies of my notes, and when I'd offer to study together they'd confess that they wanted my notes for their wall or refrigerator. I began to think perhaps I was on to something: that visualizing the process and conclusions of science was important, even for people who were already studying it.

I think one of the major gaps in communicating scientific research is that a lot of people in America identify as not "getting" science. It's this preconditioning that starts to happen when we're a different kind of thinker and, in a science class at a young age, we miss one little fundamental element, and then the entire puzzle seems illegible.

When you're twelve and fail your first bio pop quiz and decide you don't get science, it's very difficult, later on, to understand the themes and process underlying the science research you might read about in the news, or to want to pursue science in college.

I was one of those kids, and shocked myself by deciding to study biology in college. I knew I wanted to be an artist, and that I wanted my subject to be science. I am not a scientist by nature - I don't think creatively in terms of scientific experiments, and please don't ask me to record every move I make in the lab.

It's very important to me to be a science communicator who is a voice for the population that self-selects out of science, and to bring the playful, human element of research to light with easily accessible, enjoyable, scientifically accurate images.

I would say my first eureka moment came when I returned to Brown after summer vacation and the managing editors of the College Hill Independent told me they'd created a Science section, and I was it. I wrote some lousy copy on the high profile reporting on jellyfish abundance that I'd noticed in the papers that summer, and they looked it over, handed it back to me, and said, "Go make that an image."

Thus began what I do to this day: taking science content and, with a combination of text and visuals, making it into my kind of story: the lovechild of a 19^th century dissection manual, a watercolor, a research paper, and a graphic novel.

Scribing came later. I was trained by Alphachimp Studio, a graphic facilitation firm, to become a professional scribe, bringing my easel and a box of markers around the country to help support people telling their stories with visuals.

Scientists are my biggest fans. It's when I'm scribing a science conference that I feel most motivated and confident about the need for this work. I can sense the hunger for new ways of reaching new audiences, for fresh perspectives on the science, and for new visual skill sets in science communities.

I try to pair my presence at a conference with a workshop for people to develop their own scribing toolkit. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing other workshop attendants post their work to the #sciencescribe hashtag. I love watching that transition happen inside someone from when they take my workshop and are a little timid, to proudly posting their work and developing their very own scribe personality.

It's most frustrating to me when people come up to me and say they have no idea how I do what I do, or that I have special abilities for doing it. Perhaps I'm special in that I trusted my gut each step of the way and kept doing what I loved, and maybe that's more difficult for others, but my ability to capture ideas in an original way came with practice and devotion. The bare-bones tools are there for everybody to use.

The world of science communication is really opening up, and there's a place for everybody at the table, whatever skills they bring. When I arrived on the scene I noticed there wasn't anybody really doing exactly what I wanted to do, and I managed to find a niche to fill pretty quickly. When I'm talking to people who want to get in the field, I try to encourage them to pursue their deepest, most secret plan with as much regularity as they can.

My top tips would be:

• Don't expect to know what you want to do when you first start doing it. You teach yourself about your work by making it. Keep making, making, making.
• Get feedback on what you make. What does the person who's an expert in your craft think of it? What does the person who's an expert in your content of choice, but not your craft think of it? What does your mom think of it? Does she understand it? (Grain of salt here.) What do you think of it? (Take this with the biggest grain of salt in the world, and don't check in with yourself on what you think of it until after a big meal, a good night's sleep and some exercise.
• Care for the vessel that spits out your ideas. The online and communication and everywhere culture, in this moment, seems to encourage divesting ourselves of our need for decent food and sleep in favor of making good product. The two are inseparable for me, and I would like to be a voice urging you to go to bed, and also to take the weekend off and go outside.
• Creative play is essential. Take a course at the local continuing ed program in something you're not expert at. Try a new medium and let go of your expectations. Go to the museum, read the bestselling novel, consume as much as you can culturally, and don't be a snob about where your next big inspiration will come from.

It's my master plan that all science conferences, workshops, classes, and courses everywhere will be sketchnoted, and that those notes will be made available to the general public. My dream is that it will become increasingly encouraged for people to learn science by making art about it. I believe that highly accurate, explanatory handmade visuals are the next level of science communication and education, at least for the visual thinking set.

Look out for future posts from Perrin offering advice to help you get started science scribing and other useful tips and tools for the conferences ahead.

See Perrin's most recent work here: