SciArt – who is it for?

Several weeks ago, I was listening to the Art Juice podcast and they had a great guest – Seth Godin.  He was talking about his new book “The Practice”, which is a collection of small snippets about how creating art is all about the process.  I can totally relate!  It is such a soothing and meditative activity for me.  I immediately downloaded the book and swallowed it whole.

Aside from emphasizing the importance of regularly practicing our art, Seth Godin kept asking the question “who is it for?”.  

It really made me think.  Over the past 5 years or so, there has been a big movement of making science more accessible to the general public.  The field of scicomm (science communication) is exploding.  In the past, scientific research has been limited to the “ivory tower” of academia and the “dark (and secretive) side” of pharmaceutical companies.  But people who do not work in science everyday, also deserve to know where their taxpayer dollars are going.

COVID-19 has made it more evident than ever how important scientific research is to society.

People need to understand scientific reasoning and it is our (scientists’) responsibility to present our findings in small, user friendly, digestible pieces of information to get people interested.  And SciArt provides a great channel for doing this! 

I want people to get mesmerized by scientific research, wonder what these images mean and then take the time to delve deeper into the latest findings.  Especially in the field of neuroscience, which unfortunately has been the “ugly stepchild” that people don’t want to invest their time or money into.  With fields like oncology developing at lightning speed, doesn’t neuroscience also deserve a chance?