On October 5, 2023, students of Lviv Polytechnic National University visited Lviv Open Lab – a space of innovative education in Lviv – as part of the European public tours of the EUSTS project. Lviv Open Lab is a modern co-working space for young people and part of the TVORY network of youth spaces, which has been operating since 2020. Its main goal is to popularize science, technology and STEAM education for teenagers and young people, create opportunities for their development and exchange of progressive ideas. Co-working cooperates with and has the support of a number of EU countries, promoting the Ukrainian youth science in the European educational and scientific space.
During the excursion, Lviv Polytechnic students learned about the flagship initiative of Lviv Open Lab – the science festival Open Lab (OL), which annually takes place in Lviv. It is significant that in 2021 it became the first event of its kind to popularize science in our city, which brought together more than 2,700 visitors – mainly young people and families with children. The mission of the festival is to bring science out of the closed spaces of laboratories and offices to the general public, to create a platform – a meeting place for science and the everyday life, and to give an impetus to the development of science in an accessible and understandable form for every person. So, OL is, first of all, a scientific festival that combines practice and theory in the edutainment format, applying learning methods with game elements; secondly, it is a platform for promoting science; thirdly, it is a space where science is accessible and visible in ordinary things.
Students especially got interested in the project «Male and female ambassadors of science», which is also conducted by Lviv Open Lab together with the TVORY network of youth spaces within the framework of the «Springboard to equality» project by the United Nations Population Fund in Ukraine (UNFPA Ukraine) in partnership with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister for of European and Euro-Atlantic integration and with the financial support of the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine. The experts of the project aim to: dispel myths that only men can be real scientists, therefore, attention was focused on gender-sensitive popularization of science; to refute the common statement that science is extremely boring; and to prove the importance of pumping soft skills during the demonstration of one’s own scientific achievements.
