IS

Interview

		Esther Font
		Laura Valls Bulletin Coordinator
	“I have an on-going task, where each day I'm learning"	Born in Castellar and resident in Sant Feliu del Racó, Esther Font is passionate about nature and open spaces, a keen horse rider, hiker and tennis player. She is part of the Castellar tennis committee, president of the Parent-Teachers Association at her localschool,educati-on and environment consultant at the Castellar town council, member of the neighbourhood association, and contributor to various educational journals… Needless to say, she doesn't have as much time as she'd like to share with her family and friends, although she herself says that she can't complain because, with patience, it's possible to do everything.
Esther Font's career path has gone hand in hand with a non-stop training process. A Biological Sciences graduate, she got involved in the world of cinema and communication and, later, specialised in Education and Communication Spaces. From 1994 till 2007 she worked as a freelance professional dedicated to scientific and environmental communication and museography. And she has still found the energy to spare for her doctoral thesis.		How did you end up in a science museum? Like everything in my life, a little by accident. In 1995 I was working as a coordinator at the Association for the Study and Defence of Nature, which led me to mount various exhibitions with environmental themes and do some filming for television. Through Carme Prats, mNACTEC offered to take part in the final project of the “Enérgeia” exhibition and lend me a hand with its organisation. Do mNACTEC's workshops have the Esther Font hallmark? Hallmark no, but trajectory, yes. From the first workshops till now there has been a development in working methods. We increasingly have a more precise methodology and, above all, there's good coordination between the different people involved. A new workshop requires the cooperation of the settlement committee ( la Beda ), the museum instructors team, adaptation of the curriculum design and experience in the construction of gadgets and their maintenance (Enric Castro) and the participation of scientific inspectors. Reconciling scientific rigour and entertainment seems like a tough job… It's an on-going task, where each day I'm learning. It's certainly difficult to communicate science in a pleasant way without vulgarising it and taking into account the opinion of all the people involved: the theatre company, the settlement and visitor's committee, and all the museum instructors. No matter how good an idea might seem, it has to be tested, the instructors trained and a follow-up and evaluation done in order to improve the different activities and achieve a good end result. Finally, does working on the “outside” or “inside” change things? Yes and no. Obviously there are differences but, at the work level, I do the same as I did before. On the one hand, I could highlight a certain freedom in the area of budgets and billing. On the other hand, however, as the work involves a very creative element, perhaps I find it harder to concentrate at the museum, because the “unscheduled” work that gets added to the everyday workload doesn't let me progress at the pace I'd like to.