การประชุม ASPAC 2024

Opening Speech of Maria Isabel Garcia
Sept 4, 2024
ASPAC Conference 2024
Gwacheon National Science Museum, South Korea

Annyeonghaseyo dear ASPAC family, friends and to my dear colleagues in the EXCO.

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Congratulations and a deep thank you to the Gwacheon National Science Museum for hosting the ASPAC conference which now happens every 2 years.

We would like to thank President Han who has so graciously rallied the team of GNSM to roll out for us this ASPAC Conference with the very compelling theme which is “Empathy” – a virtue that is free inside all of us human beings to give but seems to be in short supply. So please help me give a round of applause to President Han and the GNSM team.

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ASPAC has members from 20 countries and administrative regions in Asia and the Pacific, Europe, Middle East and North America. It currently has over 50 members. We are extremely diverse in terms of language and culture so it is not easy to coordinate a big conference like this one. A special thank you goes to Director Boo Young whom I have been coordinating with directly for the past year to make this happen. She has worked extremely hard to help us make this happen. Let us give her a round of appreciation please.

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All conferences feel very formal but I hope we all remind ourselves all the time that we are in the enterprise of engaging humans and that includes one another. In our website, we define ourselves as:

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“engaging in collaborative professional development through regular conferences, masterclasses and the like; recruiting various methods of science and tech engagement including but not limited to creating and hosting exhibitions, shows, workshops, seminars, fairs and festivals; reaching a wide range of audiences that cover the spectrum in terms of admissions to our facilities and our outreach programs; serving as the breeding/training ground for e<ective science engagement as a distinct profession or as a skill that others would want to develop; serving as a uniquely creative public platform for science and technology highlights and advances.”

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And most of all, the reason for being behind ASPAC - this group of science engagement institutions located in the Asia Pacific region and/or have interests in the region, is we are at the service of sustainability for people and planet- in the service of life. There is no point of science engagement if not to serve life – ALL of life.

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But after all the formalities of the opening, and when we really get down to what we want to the focus of the conference which is “empathy”, what you will hear in the sessions may strike you in a way different from other themes. When you will be asked to connect to other ways of working, living, playing or even dreaming, it may now mean we may have to rethink

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our own established roles of being the main source of wisdom for genuine or creative science engagement. So I would like to break open the figurative doors of this conference centered around the theme of “empathy” with a compelling invitation for you to consider 3 questions such as:

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1. Who is the missing designer in your exhibits when you design an exhibit on any topic?

2. When you engage someone in the story of science – do you start from your own comfort zone or where the “other” comes from?

3. Whose dreams of possible futures should be on exhibit for millions of people who go to our science centers and museums?

If we listen and engage with empathy – maybe will be able to transform stories of science to create genuine impact for the people we serve and the lives of our own team members. Most of all, we will always acknowledge that we are always in an exchange with our audiences and that learning is always two-way – like neolttwigi.

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The neolttwigi is a see-saw that I became so fascinated with in the K-dramas on the Joseon period. They are see-saws that the women of the court step on to catapult each other to see father than what they could see within the confines of the royal palace. I think that is how we and the people we engage are juxtaposed – we lift each other so we could see farther, and hopefully better. And every time we lift each other up – it takes presence. energy, calibration- in this empathic active exchange, BOTH our worlds get bigger, and kinder as we realize that we all need to remake the world TOGETHER.

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It is only every 2 years that we hold an ASPAC Conference, a family reunion – seeing old family members and getting to know new ones. Every time you empathize with a colleague here, so diTerent from you, think of that kind of see-saw, the neolttwigi. Now let us start the conference and see what lies beyond the horizons you had before you landed in Seoul.

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Thank you.

Closing Speech of Maria Isabel Garcia (President, ASPAC)

Sept 6, 2024

ASPAC Conference 2024

Gwacheon National Science Museum, South Korea

If I could be like Singapore’s Electrified Kiki – I would burst with many points of light to, on behalf of the ASPAC family, thank President Han and the members of the GNSM team for hosting ASPAC 2026. The conference was full of insights, amazing connections and promising possibilities for impact for the work we do.

BUT we are imperfect humans. None of us could catch ALL the light offered to us during the last 4 days and shine with it instantly. The keynotes may have NOT struck a chord at all. Maybe you found the sessions generally good or so-so BUT if you were paying attention, if you were in an active empathetic exchange even for a moment with another’s thought, experience, or sentiment, your mind is walking a new expanse now, a new territory that you did not know before you landed in this Starship enterprise of the Gwacheon National Museum where us ASPAC aliens coming from diKerent geographical, cultural and personal backgrounds, come together to see how we can connect our worlds to make the larger common universe we have, better. A few weeks before we came here, I would startle my team and I would just burst out singing Colors of the Wind from Pocahontas. In that song – I would always really shift inside me when I sing “but if you walk the footsteps of a stranger, you learn things you never knew, you never knew.”

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And when the EXCO met last Monday, we paid attention to the network as it is evolving, post pandemic and what it needs. We acknowledged that our spaces have evolved to not be mere extensions of schools/universities or labs BUT cultural spaces where the many worlds that people possess come to reckon with understanding how the world works the way science does it – with experimentation, proof and reason. As humans, we know that facts could repel our understanding just like raincoats and umbrellas repel the rain. When they enter our facilities, we are actually the guests inside their minds so we have to acknowledge where they are in in this innerspace and empathize.

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We also know that the digital revolution has accelerated change in so many dimensions of our lives and that the way we mentored and passed on to our next generation should change. ASPAC is a relatively small organization with volunteer leaders but this process has survived us for 27 years. We will see how we can embed the process that works but at the same time, make sure we can shapeshift to respond to rapid changes. For now, we respond by:

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As an exchange of info where member institutions could provide links of the areas they want to freely share or collaborate on and we could put in the ASPAC website. Information could include but not limited to studies of the impact of science centers on various dimensions of individual and community life. This will be very useful to all as we are all wanting to present measures of impact especially when we are pitching for support for what we do.

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We will be open to suggestions for a collab project that ASPAC could fund that will benefit the network such as the co-creation, co-design of exhibits and/or traveling exhibits, live- streaming of Science Café’s especially involving phenomenon that is geo-specific. We are also planning to see which of our members would want to engage in staK-exchange.

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The ASPAC Masterclasses for Emerging Leaders (AMEL) will continue as feedback has been very good and this also serves as a strong opportunity for connections among young professionals in the network. The first AMEL in 2025 will be in May in Osaka, Japan and Questacon will take the lead in connecting ASPAC with Osaka Science Museum/Center. Other AMELs could be hosted by any member institution where ASPAC members will shoulder the airfare/accommodations/lunch but ASPAC will pay for the registration of the ASPAC participants.

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We shall have do 30-minute touchpoints with CEOs across the region which will be led by our ASPAC Executive Director, SongChoon Lee. These touchpoints will serve to maintain connections among the CEOs and some kind of pop-up virtual townhall for ASPAC CEOs.

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We are also going to engage in an exercise to revise the existing format of ASPAC Conferences to see if we could a format that is more suited to the times and to the needs and sensitivities of our members.

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When I opened the conference, I spoke of neolttwigi – the seesaw that Korean women got in to catapult each other to see, even momentarily, what lies beyond the confines of the palace. I have a real-life proof that we are indeed in a see-saw exchange in science engagement with others.

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In 2002, long before I was asked to help create The Mind Museum, my husband died. To heal myself, I trained science teachers in poor communities. I made my own exhibits which I literally pitched along forest trails and coasts when I trained the teachers. I was so infinitely inspired by the teachers I worked with. They gave me back my broken heart, still broken but can see beyond the pain of loss. I really think that it was why and how I said “yes” to helping create the first science museum in our country even if I had no museum background or even any involvement in building anything.

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Fast forward 2016 when The Mind Museum was already 4 years old and I was again in an island on some kind of field work when a man approached me asking if I were “Maribel” and if I was the one who on my own, trained science teachers a while back in that part of the country. I said yes and asked the man if he was one of those whom I trained because I really did not remember him. He replied: “Not me. It was my wife and she died a few years ago. BUT I remember you because that night when you trained her, she came back to our island in our little boat, she woke up the whole village saying she found out something amazing from what you shared with her. She said that you said regardless of where any human comes from, rich or as poor as we, or diCerent skin or looks, we are ALL made from stars!”

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Whenever I doubt if there is a point to what we do, I recall that story in my head.

So indeed, they give back to us too. We are indeed in a neolttwigi, a seesaw - stardust lifting stardust.

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Thank you all and have a safe trip back home.