Meet Sean Greer, who plays a central role at a Northern Ireland attraction that welcomes more than a quarter of a million visitors every year.
Sean Greer is a Learning & Engagement Officer at W5, Belfast’s science and discovery centre which has been providing fun and learning opportunities for visitors of all ages for almost 25 years.
And those visitor numbers could soar this year as a new tourism trend is seeing an increase in the number of parents seeking to add meaningful educational experiences during short trips and holidays.
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Bangor man, Sean, 58, has been at W5 for 21 years and has had the privilege of welcoming teachers on school trips who are now returning with their classes years after attending as pupils themselves. And it's his ambition that a young person will go on to become a Nobel Prize winner after being inspired by a trip to W5.
He spoke to Belfast Live during the NI Science Festival, which runs until this Sunday. Now in our 11th year, the event has grown to become the largest celebration of its kind on the island of Ireland and in its relatively short lifespan one of the leading science festivals in Europe.
"My role is focused around science-based workshops for visiting schools from nursery age right up to A-level students alongside evening events for adults. I have a strong background in science having studied it at university although much of my role often requires a certain amount of performance so I have an amateur interest in theatre.
"I've also taught English overseas and before I came to W5 I lived in Japan for a long time. That proved to be good grounding for this job as it involved explaining a difficult concept as simply as possible as I also try to make science exciting and fun too."
Belfast’s award-winning science and discovery centre, W5 (whowhatwherewhenwhy), first opened its doors in March 2001 with a mission ‘to fire the spirit of discovery’, intriguing and engaging visitors with hands-on and immersive learning in a fun and inclusive environment.
Julie Frieder, Angela Heisten, and Annika Paradise, the co-authors of “Wonder Year: A Guide to Long-Term Family Travel and Worldschooling,” have honed in on the value of integrating education into family travel. They believe that in the coming year, families will incorporate the world school philosophy into their trips through micro-educational experiences.
The trend comes as W5 has been completely transformed after a major refurbishment. Two reimagined exhibition floors will excite and inspire, with exhibits and experiences covering everything from climate change and nature to film and TV production, optical illusions, built engineering, medical science and much, much more.
With over 250 hands-on exhibits, thrilling live science shows, and eight incredible interactive zones, there’s something to spark curiosity in everyone.
So what has kept Sean at W5 for over two decades? "It's a really fun job and a rewarding one too. One of the great things is the level of variety, working with all age groups in a range of activities and subjects. That means I still have to learn a lot myself in order to share it with other people, which both keeps me young and the job interesting.
"People do and see science everyday without realising it - things like boiling the kettle, looking out the window and seeing a rainbow or the stars at night. Our goal is that people leave here feeling inspired, wanting to learn more and that science can be fun. I think we do that really well.
"I have a fantasy that one day in the future, somebody from Northern Ireland will be receiving their Nobel Prize for physics or chemistry and reflect in their speech about what first steered them towards science by remembering watching somebody in an orange lab coat at W5 doing a show that made them think 'I'd like to do a bit more of that'."
For more ways to combine facts with fun and suggested itineraries for giant educational days out, visit Discover Northern Ireland.
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