This was our second interview of the day. Doing two interviews in one day may not be generally tenable. We also interviewed Heather in Blue 1. This time I was asking the questions and Bambo recording.
Discovered early that Heather ran the Hub. Suddenly the whole public programmes thing makes sense as does It's Electricity.
Heather seemed quite scathing compared to Derek, especially about management techniques. She was a management trainee at Boots and compares TQ very disfavourably to that company. That said she is clearly passionate about thie type of science education.
She did the MSc course originally and has done a lot of work with different science centres. I wonder if she is something of a "new generation" in these things compared to the "old school" or if she sees herself that way?
I was concerned at the time that I felt as though the interview was quite awkward and that I was not getting much "good" material. Afterwards though I am more happy with it. I think we're not going to get a lot of narratives as it were but hopefully we are getting lots of useful opinions.
Her main passion seems to be scientific citizenship. She feels that TQ does not do enough outreach work and that she would rather see things like an ability to email an MP with your scientific concerns. This is cognate in some ways with Derek's interest in sustainability.
That said her other strong point was about how much "fun" what she does should be. I think we need to sophisticate out production vs education split and realise that there is a significant difference between public and schools programmes, although they are both different again from the production side.
She is still quite new here and it would be interesting to know how much clout she feels she has.