I’m the Science Content Producer at the Royal Institution which means not only do I get to devise and build the demonstrations you see on their Christmas Lectures, but I also head up their international tour, which currently takes us to Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore, but is growing year-on-year. I also run my own business which produces stage shows and demonstrations for large companies and I also work in telly!
Fran Scott writes an exclusive piece for Female First
I LOVE my job!
My work is so very varied so have a few different ‘typical’ days! Sometimes I’m writing content, which means my headphones go on and I get out some plain paper (always plain paper when I’m doing proper thinking, not a computer) and spend some time mulling over a problem or demonstration or narrative. Narrative is a big one for me, yes I love the big demonstrations but I’m not a fan of when they’re clumped together in a mangled mess with no story linking them together. And demos, well, we all know I love them and my best ones I’ve come up with when locked in a room by myself with my trusty plain paper!
If I’m building demonstrations, a typical day would involve spending the morning at my computer looking up and buying parts (to be delivered in the following days), with the afternoon spent in my workshop working on the parts I ordered the day before. There’s a lot of thinking and working things out involved in my job and that’s what I love about it. A lot of the props we make haven’t been made before, so I have to learn through testing.
If we’re delivering a stage show, then the preparation days are long and hard, but pumped with adrenaline. That kind of day would involve me catching up with tech crews, ensuring I give them the updates from the previous days and any changes we’ve made, then I start preparing the props. There are always some props that can’t be set until right before the show. I usually like to have a show ready to go 30minutes before the audience start coming in. Then once set, I get myself ready for stage, pin the stray bits of my hair back, put on some lip gloss and get my microphone on - ready to go onto stage.
If I’m presenting on television this will inevitably involve an early start. I normally have to do my own hair and make-up which is not my strong point so I start early and put as much hairspray on as possible to glue it all into place… I’m notorious for being child-like messy, with my clothes and hair always misbehaving. Then I’ll get called onto set or location depending on if it’s studio or location shooting. My time on set if never actually that long and for me this is the easy bit- all I’ve got to do is talk and I can certainly do that(!). The hard bit is making sure I’m 100% prepared and being completely on form when called into action. Once shooting is complete, which sometimes can be pretty late at night, it’s then back home to collapse on the sofa. I always find filming exhausting - having to be non-messy for hours is hard work.
My job has opened me up to getting involved in some pretty cool stuff
My presenting work (I presented with Children’s BBC before LEGO MASTERS) has meant I’ve had access to some incredible places. I’ve filmed in glass factories, train factories (if you can call them that!>), I’ve filmed in the tunnels of Crossrail, tried the latest tech and met some truly intelligent and brilliant people along the way.
I’ve also had chance to go some good parties. Our CBBC show (along with two others) got nominated for a few BAFTAs so I got an invite to the awards ceremony- something I never thought a Northern farm girl like me would ever get to go to. We didn’t win, but next time eh?
It's quite a funny story how I got into my job…
After completing my Masters (in Neuroscience) I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just knew that my dream of working in a lab wasn’t quite what I thought it was. Then on a random trip to London with friends, just before we had to catch our train back home, they somewhat dragged me to the Science Museum, as they thought I’d like it. I LOVED it. So much so I asked one worker how I would go about getting a job there. That person gave me an email address and lots of emails (and a job interview) later I started my career as a Science Communicator at the wonderful Science Museum. My initial role there was to present the science shows, but I then went onto write their weekend shows and workshops and I quickly realised that I loved building props and demonstrations and playing with the narrative of a show.
After a few years I worked my way into TV, starting at the bottom, of course. I made tea, bought the office doughnuts I couldn’t afford, but then after lots of work experience I was offered a job on a CBBC science show, called Richard Hammond’s Blast Lab. I started as a Runner, but when they realised just how much I loved demonstrations I was prompted to Researcher. I worked so hard- it was my dream job. It was a fantastic stepping stone for me and made me realise just how much I loved developing demonstrations. And I seemed to be good at it!
After a fair few years behind the scenes- I worked on programmes such as Horizon and Bang Goes the Theory as well as BBC branded science stage shows- a chance meeting meant I got a screen test for a new Science based CBBC show. That show was Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom. I got the role and for 5 series the boys and I would look at how science and engineering has changed the world in which we live, with my focus being on the demonstrations, of course.
At that point I couldn’t keep up with the demand for the science stage shows I was writing (I had kept doing these as well as the TV work) so I set up my business, Great Scott! Productions. This involved writing bespoke shows for companies- and to practice these I would sometimes head into the Royal Institution where I knew their demonstration genius Andy. Andy and I would happily chat about demonstrations for hours. In 2016 Andy left to retrain as a teacher. At that point, even though my business and presenting career was going well, there was no way that I could not apply for his job. I did. And I love it just as much as I thought I would.
I’m a bit of a goal driven creature and although I love the day to day things I do in my job, I sometimes have an issue with not thinking that I’m doing it well enough or not achieving the aims I have fast enough. Then I have certain moments that make me realise that I *am* doing OK.
One such moment involves the first demonstration I ever saw when I visited the Science Museum (when my friends dragged me there). This is one where dry ice is placed into water, it bubbles away making lots of (what looks like) smoke and you can then attach a pipe that’s been dipped in washing up liquid and the ‘smoke’ stops and instead a bubble forms. That bubble being full of cloudy carbon dioxide. It’s much more beautiful than I making it sound. Anyway, I saw this demonstration at the age of 21 with my face press against the glass of the performance area at the Science Museum, having no idea of the career that awaited me.
Fast forward a few years and my business had got invited to perform demonstrations at the House of Parliament. And there I was with my team performing that exact same demonstration in front of MPs as we lobbied for more attention to be paid to the science curriculum in schools. Not only do I get stomach jumps when I go the Houses of Parliament but the fact we were there using demonstrations to try and influence actual important decisions made my heart smile.
I’m a big advocate of getting more students into STEM subjects at school and allowing them to experience how wonderful these subjects are
There is a perception that it is hard to get good grades in STEM subjects, so people steer clear of them or are maybe scared of them. But don’t be, there’s nothing to be scared of. STEM is all about questioning everything and having an inquisitive nature which is much more exciting than scary.
I’m currently a judge on LEGO MASTERS and it makes me so happy seeing males and females of all ages enjoying building together and using their brains to tackle the challenge of how to make something taller, stronger or just more fun using bricks.
I’ve had some weird experiences at work too!
My whole working life is full of weird and unusual moments as I’m dealing with such varied things. In just the last few weeks I’ve had to find balloons that can pop with exactly right amount of force, research what fuel catches fire easily (but not too easily!) that can be lit with a handheld fireball launcher, attach weights on to 20 origami animals so they’re perfectly balanced, teach a balloon artist what mitochondria are, measure the distance paint flies out of a balloon when popped, carry a 4.8m long piece of wood up a 2m wide spiral staircase, figure out how to get a cow in a lift and attempted to make some algae jet-lagged… each month it’s a similarly bizarre to-do list.
Fran Scott is currently judging LEGO MASTERS on Channel 4 – the last episode is on tomorrow night (Tuesday, December 4) at 8pm.
Tagged in Women At Work