The paper describes an informal education activity focusing on coastal dynamics to engage with 10-year-old students. It combines science concepts, storytelling, and creative dance through six exercises translating wave generation, propagation, and sediment transport. Benefits from these types of activities range from engagement with science to acknowledgement of individual differences. Results of a questionnaire (112 students) show evidences of engagement and willingness to participate further.

This paper focuses on the use of games and illustrations in scientific outreach. This approach tries to make scientific concepts attractive to the general public by trying to reach people of all ages and social backgrounds. In this work, we would like to give a brief overview of some didactic tools, retracing the choices made while ideating them, thanks mainly to close collaboration with artists and illustrators.

At the 14th IEEE International eScience Conference domain specialists and data and computer scientists discussed the road towards open weather and climate science. Open science offers manifold opportunities but goes beyond sharing code and data. Besides domain-specific technical challenges, we observed that the main challenges are non-technical and impact the system of science as a whole.

The Environment Agency (EA), responsible for flood risk management in England, is moving towards the use of probabilistic river flood forecasts. By showing the likelihood of future floods, they can allow earlier anticipation. But making decisions on probabilistic information is complex and interviews with EA decision-makers highlight the practical challenges and opportunities of this transition. We make recommendations to support a successful transition for flood early warning in England.

Air is as valuable a resource as water. We defined a novel index, the Clean aIr Index (CII), to evaluate air cleanliness in terms of a global standard. Japan was chosen as a study area. The air cleanliness of Tokyo was 1.5 and 2.3 times higher than that of Seoul and Beijing, respectively. Extremely clean air occurred to the west of the Pacific coast and in the southern remote islands of Tokyo during summer. CII can be valuable, e.g., for encouraging sightseeing in and migration to fresher air.

Boundary|Time|Surface was an ephemeral art installation providing an opportunity to contemplate the human experience relative to the enormity of time and the fragile and arbitrary nature of human-defined boundaries. Exhibitions derived from the documentation of the original installation provided opportunities for over 25 000 members of the public to interact with the work, both aesthetically and as a source of information on the geological and sociopolitical history of the site.

We use time series data from the first United Kingdom Earth System Model (UKESM1) to create six procedurally generated musical pieces for piano. Each of the six pieces help to explain either a scientific principle or a practical aspect of Earth system modelling. We describe the methods that were used to create these pieces, discuss the limitations of this pilot study and list several approaches to extend and expand upon this work.

We study the impact of an educational seismology program on earthquake awareness and preparedness in Nepal. We see that educational activities implemented in schools are effective at raising awareness levels and in improving adaptive capacities and preparedness for future earthquakes. Knowledge also reached the broader community though social learning, leading to broadscale awareness. The result observed in this study is encouraging for the continuation and expansion of the program.

Geoscientists can struggle to communicate with non-geoscientists, especially around contentious geoscience issues. We compare the thoughts and feelings of geoscientists and non-geoscientists around the subsurface, mining/quarrying, drilling and flooding. We find that geoscientists focus more on human interactions when thinking about these processes, while non-geoscientists focus more on economic and environmental impacts. Understanding these differences and similarities can help enable dialogue.

We explore how earthquakes affect everyday life through a multidisciplinary approach that incorporates historical, artistic and scientific perspectives. The effects of distant earthquakes are investigated using data collected on a seismometer located in the Wills Memorial Building tower in Bristol. We also explore historical accounts of earthquakes and their impact on society, and, finally, we use the data collected by the seismometer to communicate artistically the Earth's tectonic movements.

The EMusic project aims to use music as a tool to explain, to a wide audience, the role of geophysics and geology in our society. By means of the sonification of the electromagnetic (EM) response of the Earth, we are able to accompany people on an imaginary voyage into the subsurface so that they can travel into the depths and into the past. In this way, the audience can learn about the geological evolution of the site, which is used as a natural stage, from where the EM data were collected.

Earth Girl Volcano is a casual strategy interactive game about saving communities at risk of volcanic hazards. The easy-to-play game features a friendly animated visual style and an engaging simulation of volcanic events. The game was designed by a multidisciplinary team to appeal to mainstream non-technical audiences, and it was inspired by the experiences of disaster survivors and civil defense teams. Players can learn through gameplay about disaster preparedness and response.

Hertz is an art–science installation allowing the public to experience the hidden vibrations of our planet through infrasound. Infrasound is sound below the human range of hearing produced by geological and atmospheric motion. Real-time recordings of infrasound were played through adapted furniture, which shook to allow the Earth’s inaudible symphony to be experienced. Hertz was exhibited to 7000 participants, of which 85 % felt reconnected to the environment after participating.

We organized an exhibition on the climate crisis using high-quality images shot by scientists, who are amateur photographers, during their campaigns in glacier regions. Working-age people, attracted by the gorgeous images, received the message that such beauty is in danger of vanishing. Twice, the visitors could talk directly with the experts to discuss geoscience, photography, and aesthetic choices and, of course, climate change, a problem that each of us has to play a part in to solve.

We present a new approach in science communication that uses art, such as poetry and ancient music, to entice people to learn about landscapes. Our goal is to promote a deeper understanding of landscapes by integrating their origin and physical aesthetic with their cultural and artistic heritage. We aim to educate people to have a new perception, starting from a site's physical beauty, building on scientific study and cultural history, and arriving at the knowledge of its social importance.

One of the National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology's (INGV) activities is producing resources concerning educational and outreach projects in geophysics and natural hazard projects. Over the past 15 years, graphic and visual communication have become essential tools for supporting institutional and research activities. In this paper, we describe successful INGV team experiences resulting from close relationships and collaborative work between graphic designers and research scientists.

In this age of environmental awareness, it is interesting to see how the ecological movement was created by a saint and an artist. The unlikely team of St. Francis and Giotto were revolutionaries – the former, with his ideas on natural philosophy, and the latter, who portrayed the geological landscape in a way that made any viewer aware of the majesty of God's creation. These two created a lasting legacy as they shaped our perspective on the environment over 700 years ago.

This summary of 10 years of INGV’s calendar competitions for primary schools describes an experience of Earth science education through drawings. We have asked children to send drawings about Earth sciences and the dynamics of planet Earth. In addition to the competition, the drawings reflect impressions and thoughts and illustrate the children’s point of view. One can sense a great sensitivity, consideration, responsiveness and respect for the planet and a positive feeling towards science.

The Global South is vulnerable to natural hazards like floods and droughts, but creativity could support community preparedness. We mapped 267 papers that use a variety of art forms. They aim to raise the public's awareness or instigate adaptation by participants. In our pilot in South Africa, community members developed stories about preparing for future drought. This led to an imagination of future events, conversations about adaptation, intergenerational exchange, and increased awareness.

An educational program, focusing on seismological activities at schools and on raising citizen awareness of natural hazards, has been active in France since 1995. Over this quarter century, different generations of students have learned various lessons concerning instrument installation, data recording, and analysis. Analysis of earthquakes has generated a strong awareness of the seismic hazard, especially after the deployment of seismometers at schools.