Sunday 17 February 2013

The amazing adventures of the ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar



It's mid-February. When you have spent the last 4 months of your life flogging 2013 calendars, mid-February is a good time to be able to say 'we have none left'.

A mere 2 hours before the ScienceGrrl launch party in October, I took delivery of 1500 copies of the ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar and arranged them artfully around Louise Crane's flat (much to the amusement of her cat, Loki). I remember being both exhilarated and terrified. 1500 is a big number. Fortunately I didn't have long to think about it before having to get changed into a long red dress, jump in a taxi, and spend the evening celebrating the fact that we'd actually got the thing ready on schedule.

More fortunately, we sold over 900 copies, to personal contacts, through shops at the Science Museum, Museum of Science and Industry, Jodrell Bank and Imperial College London, but mostly through the online shop. The online orders have been administered, parcelled up and posted out by Louise Crane and Suzi Gage - bless 'em - and travelled all over the world. 

You can have a tinker with the interactive map below to find out exactly where they've got to - just  click on the red dots for the nearest town. We have Louise Crane to thank for this, too. Caution: like a good Google doodle, it's highly addictive.


Of course, the UK loves us (not least Dundee and Birmingham, where Universities placed huge orders to distribute to local schools), but the map indicates we have a fair smattering of fans in the US too. Here's a photo one happy customer sent us of the calendar sunning itself on a beach in Florida:


Wish you were here?

By contrast, another copy headed for chillier climes to join the all-female team working for the British Antarctic Survey at Rothera Research Station on the Antarctic Peninsula


Tamsin Gray, Mairi Simms and Rosey Grant - Antarctic Meteorologists

Most intriguing, perhaps, is the copy heading to Lwengo in Uganda - it will take pride of place in the TASTE mobile laboratory, which gives children in rural areas the opportunity to get 'hands on' with science.

Those of you who are adept at mental arithmetic will be wondering where the remaining 600 copies from our 1500 print run have gone. I'm pleased to say that they have been mainly donated to schools - thanks to Chi Onwurah MP and colleagues, every in school in Newcastle will be getting one, and others are heading out to schools in London, Belfast and Bolton. We've donated others to science clubs and libraries, and used a few as gifts to introduce ScienceGrrl to would-be collaborators - including MPs across the political spectrum, others involved in science policy... and Maggie Philbin... and Prof Brian Cox

If you've got a ScienceGrrl 2013 calendar, we'd love to hear where it is and how it's inspiring the people who see it - e-mail us via the website or tweet at us with the details.

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