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Reference: EU0010000331
European Commission DG Research and Technical Development

Researchers' night

The main objective of the Researchers' night consists of bringing the researchers closer to the public at large, allowing for direct exchanges, meetings and interactive activities. It gives the public, and in particular young people, the opportunity to meet researchers within the context of festive and fun activities and to highlight the appeal of pursuing a research career.

The Researchers' night are organised under the Specific Marie Curie actions within the 7th Framework Programmes for Research and Technological Development.

What kind of projects can be funded?

Researchers' nights regard events of one night duration, all taking place on 27 September 2013

The activities could for example consist of:
- Hands-on experiments conducted by researchers
- Scientific demonstrations realised by researchers with public participation
- Guided visits of labs, research institutions, museumsusually closed to the public particularly at night
- "real" scientific experiments to be handled by the public
- Workshops for children (create a robot, realise a real experiment, help a researcher)
- Competitive activities (scientific quizzes, enigma's)
- Photos competition (amongst the schools of the area concerned)

Being organised on a Friday night, as most people feel the need to relax and have fun, the activities should have a primary festive character likely to convince "ordinary people" to join in and enjoy and use the most relevant communication means therefore;

All activities should imply a direct public involvement, rather than academic lectures and debates and a "fun" aspect should always be present.

Possible interactions between scientific work and other activities (theatre, music films, and literature) can also be taken into consideration.

All proposals should also plan:

European Corner - Each proposal will plan the setting up of a "European corner" aimed at illustrating the European participation in the project and allowing the public at large to better understand the European support in favour of research and researchers. Activities organised in the "European corner" can be very diverse: quizzes, competitions, exhibitions, debates, awards and are entirely left up to the applicants.
Who can participate?
Applicants are established in an EU Member State or Associated country in FP7. They can be researchers, research organisations, academia, businesses, public authorities, schools, science museums, parents /teachers associations, organisations, foundations, and the media.
The European Commission intends to fund at least one Researchers' night per country covered.
- There must be at least one European corner per project; should there be more than one location, a higher number of European corners could be considered an asset;
- Location and activities planned in the European corner(s) have to be described in the proposal itself.
Once selected, applicants will receive:
a selection of promotional material to display in their EU Corner in order to convey the European Unions commitment to research, especially the continued support of researchers through the Marie Curie Actions.
The EU flag must also be prominent on leaflets and the EU logo present throughout the distributed items.

Deadline: was 8 January 2013.

We will keep you informed when a new call is published.

> Key documents

Researchers nights

internet: http://ec.europa.eu/research/researchersnight
Euraxess Researchers in motion

internet: http://ec.europa.eu/euraxess
Researchers nights - call for proposals and other documents

internet: http://ec.europa.eu/research/participants/portal/page/people?callIdentifier=FP7-PEOPLE-2013-NIGHT

> Contacts

DG RTD - Researchers in Europe

Directorate General for Research
European Commission
Rue de la Loi 200
B-1049 Brussels
phone: +32 2 299 88 76
fax: +32 2 299 90 79
email: researchersineurope@ec.europa.eu
internet: http://ec.europa.eu/research/index.cfm