Throwback to World Oceans Day 2018 in Paris
For the Ocean celebration, the Tropical Aquarium in Paris welcomed over 11,400 visitors over the weekend. The bet was won for the Aquarium, which wanted to take the World Oceans Day behind the scenes of experts and make it an event open to all! Many free activities were offered: stands, conferences (led by Fred from the show “It’s not rocket science!”) and a visit to the Aquarium.
The Ocean celebration went well 7th to 10th of June with Océanopolis, UBO and ACTeon teams. The Thursday and Friday were devoted to primary classes up to high school students (7 to 17 years). A game around 7 themes was conducted with many classes during these two days!
Rules of the game proposed:
- In the first time, two teams are formed. A participant is chosen from one of the teams to throw the ball on the poster.
- A poster is constituted of 7 targets each representing a theme (coastal tourism, plastics, pollution, biodiversity, invasive species, marine renewable energies, fisheries and sustainable aquaculture). A ball is given to the participant who must aim for, at a distance close enough to the poster, one of these categories (where Velcro is attached to hold the ball). The participant has 3 possible tries otherwise he has a challenge.
- If one of the categories is selected with the ball, a question is chosen by the host and posed by the adverse team.
- Once each team has played several times, students form groups of 2 or 3 students. They have to find together a solution for the Ocean: either what they could do them, every day, or what they would like that governments or companies implement. Then, each group writes their ideas on a small piece of paper that will then be sticked to the “Wall of Solutions”. This is an opportunity to discuss with the groups, and to think about the topics discussed during the game before.
Professional posters were also produced by the ResponSEAble team for this event and different kinds of goodies (bookmarks and postcards).
From Saturday to Sunday, the general public could come to learn more about ResponSEAble, participate in this game and propose, through a “Wall of Solutions”, their ideas to improve the state of the oceans. During the days open to the general public, the role of the facilitator becomes even more important: he has to be able to adapt his speech according to the age and the knowledge of the person (often from 4 to 5 years old), but also to adapt the rules of the game. From the child of 4 year old who wants to know why we have to forbid single-use plastic to the biology teacher who comes looking for information on different subjects, the public is very varied with very interesting discussions!
