Valrose Park is a small green enclave within the urban area of Nice. It features lawns, trees, ponds, and a chateau. It was the perfect place to set up the Science Village. A great success. Similar to the City of Science in Paris, this Science Village combined discovery and a playful aspect.
Students are fleeing the sciences. The same lessons are repeated throughout schooling. In high school, courses already seen in primary school are reviewed. In one word, it’s tedious! The student no longer feels like they are learning. And their adolescent brain turns this feeling into weariness or boredom. Sciences are not the only victims, the same phenomenon also occurs in history and geography.
With this recognition, it’s time to propose solutions. And the Science Village provides them. 23 stalls, all interesting, both through their content and the quality of the presenters. Expert in their subjects, they were able to adapt based on the audience: young children on Thursday and Friday with the arrival of school classes from Nice’s middle and high schools. Family attendance on Saturday. All eager for knowledge, curious about what they do not know, the visitors widened their eyes, perked up their ears, and engaged the experts.
How do aphids live and reproduce? How do we capture smells? How did prehistoric humans live in the Lazaret Cave in Nice? How are seismic tremors recorded? Why are there so many numbers on credit cards? Clear answers to all these questions lead us to utter a familiar phrase to summarize the usefulness of a walk through the Science Village: “At least tonight we will go to bed less ignorant.”
A few hours spent in the world of Sciences, traveling between seas, thanks to the Monaco Oceanographic Museum, and the sky with the Observatory of the Côte d’Azur, even makes the most literary among us want to taste again this enriching and exciting microcosm. Nice is rather well endowed with places of Science and Discovery: the Natural History Museum, which should soon extend to the Phoenix Park, the Observatory, or in Monaco the Oceanographic Museum.
But there is nothing more attractive than bringing all this together in one place like La Villette in Paris and not just for four days during the Science Festival. Allow us to dream of a large space dedicated to science in Nice.
Vincent Trinquat
