The Association for Science and Discovery Centres
From Wednesday April 1st, we are changing our name to The Association for Science and Discovery Centres.
Until now, we have been part of The British Science Association who have nurtured us over the past eight years. As of today we begin operations as an independent legal entity with our own finance, banking and IT systems, have become an employer and are of course now working from our new office in Bristol.
The Board, and team believe our new name will better reflect and communicate our role of supporting and networking the UK’s wide range of Science and Discovery Centres, Science museums and other science-engagement related organizations. Setting up our own office and administrative systems also enables us to act more efficiently as we strive to offer more events and opportunities for staff across the UK to meet one another, join together for collaborative projects and to share best practice.
Whilst we have changed our name, there will be no change to the membership structure until January 2010. Until that time, as in all previous years, 70% of the membership fee will be transferred to ECSITE Europe for their member services and 30% will remain with us. We will be consulting members on a new membership structure over the summer.
As from Today, April 1st, we will change our web address to www.sciencecentres.org.uk and our email addresses will change to at-sciencecentres.org.uk. The old Ecsite-uk addresses will simply redirect to the new addresses.
The Association for Science and Discovery Centres will be the legal name of both the company and charity. In selecting this name, the board considered a large number of options, looking for simplicity, clarity, ease of communication of our role, web address availability and potential acronyms. We were also keen to include the word Discovery as this is a core element of what the UK’s museums, science centres and related science learning organisations do. Clearly there is much work to be done by our very small team as we re-brand over the coming months and re-vamp our website in response to what members have asked for.
We very much look forward to working with you all in the future as we strive to support the excellent work of the UK’s science and discovery centres and museums.
Dr Penny Fidler
Director of The Association for Science and Discovery Centres (ASDC)