QM World Science Festival program

The 2018 World Science Festival will run in Brisbane from March 21 to 25. Photo: Queensland Museum.

Anna Levy, World Science Festival program brings STEM alive in Brisbane, The Age, 1 February 2018

At the Queen Street launch, it was revealed the festival would also host the world premiere of an orchestral adaptation of Steven Spielberg’s 1977 tour de force, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, performed with a choir.

Other popular attractions will include outdoor science experiments in the Cultural Forecourt and the return of ‘The Hatchery’ at the Queensland Museum, where visitors could view baby loggerhead turtles hatching.

The program also detailed presentations on astrophysics from NASA, science’s most extreme moments and the origins of human spirituality.

Brisbane City Council’s economic development chairman Krista Adams said the event would put Brisbane in the international spotlight.

“The World Science Festival is an enormous event for Brisbane, with over 182,000 people visiting last year,” she said.

“It’s fantastic that Brisbane is being recognised as a world-class city.”

Queensland Museum acting chief executive Jim Thompson said children and young people would be a primary focus of this year’s festival.

“We really want to attract kids into science. Science is fun and if they come and see it in a way where it is being enjoyed by a lot of people, it’s a great way to bring them in,” Dr Thompson said.

“It’s not just ‘here’s the facts of something’, it’s about why it’s so enjoyable.

“[It] just makes science a bit more accessible and within reach of everybody.”

The program also announced the festival would centre around the theme of ‘humanity’.

The full 2018 World Science Festival program is available online.