Interview with Christopher Jameson - the Director

BM. Can you elaborate on what "science discovery centre" means.

CJ Well, I mean the term science discovery centre is unashamedly a marketing label. Because after all, science is not exactly a great turn-on. I mean we are actually saying to people, our job is to give you greater happiness with something that you probably feel a bit vulnerable about. But we don't want to work from a, a deficit model, by saying you know we know you don't and if you come here you'll be better off because, clearly, people don't want to come for betterment as such they want to come for fun.

Now we could have called it a science fun centre but that would've been a bit, down market. There is a centre in, in Rotherham which is called a science adventure centre but they are more like a theme park than we are and that wasn't, well that term hadn't been invented when we used ours anyway. The word discovery links to science because people think of scientists as discoverers, and discovery is an intriguing - and attractive thing to be invited to involve yourself in. So - we started as a science centre because that's the term, that's the term, that was the generic term, for the kind of organisation we are - largely in the States I suppose. But the term science centre means different things. It can mean science park, centre for scientific expertise etcetera etcetera. And putting in that extra word was, was really to say well "why should we come? Why, why is it something that we should be interested in?" So, whether the discovery refers to what you do or what you are or what happens to you is nicely ambiguous.