Looking back at Science Festival Alliance membership

The Science Festival Alliance started in 2009, with a 3-year grant from the National Science Foundation. The goal of that grant was to use the Cambridge Science Festival (which started in 2007), as a mentor for three new science festivals in major metro areas: the San Diego Science Festival, the Bay Area Science Festival, and the Philadelphia Science Festival. The grant also provided for multi-site evaluation of these festivals, and had a little left over for coordination of the festivals as something that might become a national network. By 2012, there were enough science festival initiatives underway or getting started in the US and Canada the Science Festival Alliance seemed ready for some sort of membership system.

Check out this member toolkit from 2013 that explains all of the ways that Alliance members were working together.

The Science Festival Alliance had a more up-to-date member toolkit that was published online...and disappeared along with a lot of information and context with an unfortunate interruption of service for that site. The latest version of membership, which includes criteria for membership, can be found here.