Science is for everybody, trust me

Like many other issues, even that of Science Stories owes a lot to chance. In fact, the first spark was created around 2006 from a kitchen chat between Luciano di Jenno, the then-secretary of the UAAR, the union of rationalist atheists and agnostics, and the undersigned, who was an aspiring scientific reporter back then.

Such a chat would have never took place if, for a short period of time, we had not lived just a floor away from each other in the same building. The idea was immediately to tell about science in its progress, hence the achievements but also the errors and the human and personal stories of its protagonists – which at times they are worth a novel about them.

So here is the explanation of the name, "Science Stories": to point out that science is a collective work in continuous evolution. It is a process of knowledge involving everyone, and not a collection of formulae or crystallized concepts like we’re always presenting them, instead.

The ARCI Varese (who were hosting the UARR and learnt about the initiative), as well as the ASVP, Varese’s student association, immediately joined the project. These three associations were the one who carried out together an initial small festival in 2007, and a further, definitely wider one, in 2009.

The story of the third edition has been a very long one for many reasons. First of all, the crisis, which has made it difficult to find funds for this kind of projects, but also the wish to improve the formula and the decision (which is not banal for anyone already having their own "brand") to build a new association to whom the festival could be committed, the "Science Stories" association, which even Legambiente Varese joined.

Science stories is a second level, non-profit association, who organised this festival through a completely voluntary work.But here is the most important chapter of all, the one that is still to be written. Or better, the one that will be written in the next few weeks. The pen held in the hands of the organisers is now in the hands of the audience in Varese, who will decide what the future of the Festival will be by taking part in it in large numbers, or, on the other hand, giving the halls a miss. Both things happened in the past.