InquiBox Space Movie Night

Story by Hima Tk, Founder of InquiBox

As part of the National Science Week and the International Science Film Festival 2018, InquiBox hosted a free (open to the public) space program cinema screening for our broader community on the 7 September 2018 at OneRoof coworking space. One of the values of our startup is to bring more awareness to the public on the importance of science literacy, and we thought the movie as a medium would be a great way to bring this awareness.

While deciding on a program for the night, we peered through the selection of movies that were made available by the SCINEMA team. We wanted to choose a topic that will appeal to the majority of the public; and felt that “Space” is a topic everyone is fascinated by and also a timely topic considering all the news surrounding MARS exploration, and space travel.
‘Space’ raises some important questions, and naturally informs people about our place in the universe and make us wonder “who are we”? The selection of films also aligned well with skills that InquiBox aims to impart to the future generation: creativity, curiosity, problem solving and communication.

We chose 4 movies to make up for an hour of movie night. The featured line up of the short films included “Life of a universe”, “Neutron stars colliding”, “Searching for dark matter” and “The Mars Academy”. ‘Life of a universe” showcases the importance of being a curious learner, by challenging our own assumptions to answer life’s greatest mysteries. In the Mars Academy, which was our final documentary for the night, explored the story of underprivileged children in Brazil and the importance of spreading science to developing countries. In doing so, the documentary aimed to show how every child, can reach their full potential and think critically, sending a powerful emotional message to parents and educators about community, unity and compassion.

In preparation for the night, we created fun merchandise including posters, program guide and branded stickers, that people could take home. The posters incorporated some notable quotes from cosmologists, astronomers and astronauts such as Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, Mae Jemison and Kalpana Chawla. One of the popular quotes included Carl Sagan’s “I don’t want to believe, I want to know”. We hoped it would inspire our attendees of the night to think like a scientist and be motivated through their inspiring words. The program guide also aimed to inform people on the background of the documentaries we were showing and was a good way for people to explore more about a particular film after the event.

The venue was an easy pick, as Inquibox works from a co-working space known as One Roof. Many people from the night had never visited One Roof prior to the event, so it was good for them to see a co-working space dedicated to women-led businesses.

Lastly, the food and drinks. We had fun popping some popcorn prior to the event, and this really set the mood for the night. We catered for the night with meat, vegetarian and gluten-free options alongside some healthy fruit juices for drinks.

During the event, we had participants from a wide range of backgrounds. This ranged from parents to students undertaking their VCE as well as children, all bound by the common thread of their interest in science. It was great to see everyone socialising and getting to know one another. The highlight of the event for us personally was one family’s young son named ”Warren”, who had fun telling us about his love for science and some entertaining stories about school. He even showed us his creativity by transforming one of our posters into an aeroplane. Many left the night wanting to share their experience with others and wanting to know more about Space and the topics our movie night explored.

It was a great learning experience for the team with terms of what topics resonate with the general public and how we can increase our community engagement in the future. We are looking forward to hosting more public events in the future with National Science Week and otherwise. Thanks to the national science week team for letting us host a movie night.