BS: In terms of the type of science you're interested in or Techniquest is interested in do you think that fits well with the national curriculum.
DB: I think it does. All the sort of - well I think the, the education managers, have got a certain amount, within the education department there's a certain amount of freedom so - within it. Now I don't think the, the directors, you know apart from the education directors but the sort of board of directors don't say to the education department "You will do this this this and this." The education department will come up with a series of what they think the schools want, they'll talk to teachers, they'll have teachers in. There's a couple of teachers I think coming in next week to talk, and they'll talk to the science advisors. And they'll find out exactly what the teachers want. They'll have teachers in here to go through a particular thing and say "what do you really want out of this particular thing?" And then they'll link that to that. So the actual, programme managers have got quite a lot of freedom within there to do what they like, within the national curriculum.
So there's there's not prescriptive from that point of view so I think there's quite of lot of - you know they can basically do anything within the national curriculum - that actually fits in with what we do, and over the last few years DNA has become more in the national curriculum so we're doing quite a lot of DNA workshops. They work best in the lab but they do a DNA show in the Science Theatre as well. But they tend to work as a lab based thing so that's the way those are developed. Whereas Forces and that tended to were developed in the - Science Theatre rather than in the - in a workshop situation.
The one thing, if you do an experiment in, it tends to be better working with small groups. But obviously if you want to do a Forces talk it's better to have 90 people in there than 30 people. From a financial point of view as well as so, it tends to work (from micro) stuff tends to work on the themes that are very popular. If you put a theme on, however close it is to the national curriculum you've only got 2 groups booked in it it's not the sort of thing you're going to do it. You're going to drop that and introduce a different theme. So that's one of the things I think that - obviously there is a certain amount of financial things are going to cover it - because that's obviously a consideration for the building to keep going. But - the education managers got quite a lot of freedom in what they do but they do link it to exactly what's in the national curriculum. And when the education managers, we did, a planetarium show key stage 3 or 4 planetarium show, and the teacher came up and said "Do you know what? I don't know where you got that from but that fits in perfectly with the national curriculum." Not thinking that we actually wrote it that fitted in with the national curriculum, so, you know. So the sort of science we do here - fits in very well I think with the national curriculum. And any change in the national curriculum obviously will reflect in what we do.
Um, we have to take into account as well as the Welsh curriculum the English curriculum, because we do get schools from Bristol and things coming in. So we take that into - consideration as well when we're doing any particular show, as far as I can see anyway.