Science recreation workshops groups in Mexico: a study on an emergent community

Abstract

ABSTRACT The main goal for Science Recreation Workshops (SRWs) is to build communities that create meaningful experiences, while participants engage with science in a practical manner. This triggers processes where acting and knowing go hand-in-hand to involve each person as a whole. This requires physical, intellectual and emotional interaction to recreate various science aspects, such as knowledge, history, challenges and controversies. Just as SRWs are collective efforts, as public activities, they are usually promoted by groups as well. But, to the contrary of what happens in SRW with the public, it is common that the group efforts are more geared towards practice than theory. They prioritize working with the public rather than discussing the theoretical and methodological foundations for SRW, or their main challenges as they seek to train new members, evaluate their performance or create new activities. Groups interact with each other, however, this has only led to collaboration on projects rather than to a significant formal discussion. This article focuses specifically on SRW groups in Mexico, as a case study of an emerging community of practice. Data from active organizations were collected in 2009 and 2019, allowing us to compare the situation in these two periods of time and provides perspective on the community’s evolution.