The Lower Silesian Science Festival is a popular science event that has been continuously organised every year since 1998.
The Wroclaw edition (called Stationary edition) is run in September while the Regional edition is run in October in Bolesławiec, Dzierżoniów, Głogów, Jelenia Góra, Legnica, Lubin-Polkowice, Wałbrzych, Zgorzelec, and the Kłodzko Region. The LSSF is organised by universities of Wrocław, institutes of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and non-academic circles.
The Festival is aimed at everyone interested in science, culture, and art. Disseminating scientific achievements and their benefits constitutes one of our most important goals. We want science not to be perceived as hermetic, inaccessible, and hard to understand. We present the problems that science solves and the mysteries it uncovers. We demonstrate progress in various disciplines, especially in cutting-edge ones like biotechnology or nanotechnology. We do not avoid difficult and sensitive issues, addressing topics that respond to important social dilemmas.
Festival Programmes of subsequent editions of the LSSF cover all fields of science, technology, and art. Each year, all the organisers create a common programme in which events are grouped by disciplines, not by organisers.
Building scientifically literate society is our main goal. We assure that knowledge is at the centre of the most important processes of civilization and that the level of education of a society determines its place in the world.
We present scientific achievements in an attractive and comprehensible form for everybody. We intend our Science Festival to be a big “educational pill” containing interesting lectures, research workshops, visits to normally inaccessible laboratories, discussions, and meetings with scientists, doctors, engineers, humanists, and artists. We promote educational initiatives, that help young people to choose the direction of their future education
For years, we have been participating in building the image of Wrocław as an academic and cultural centre of Lower Silesia. We have been integrating the scientific community around the promotion of science and the responsible use of scientific discoveries. We have been trying to raise the interest of industry in applying scientific achievements. Finally, we want to convince people that Wroclaw, as well as the Lower Silesia region, are places worth living, studying, and working.
The Lower Silesian Science Festival has been a member of EUSEA (European Science Engagement Association) since 2001. EUSEA gathers science communicators, researchers, educators, and individuals who share a passion for fostering dialogue and collaboration between scientists and the public. This organization is dedicated to promoting and enhancing public engagement with science and technology across Europe and beyond.
The LSSF has also cooperated with the Beijing Association for Science and Technology since 2015 and has been a member of the Beijing Global Network of Science Festivals since 2018. In the frame of the Network, representatives of the LSSF participated in several editions of the Beijing Science Festival and international conferences dedicated to the scientific literacy of societies in the world.