Fantasy Basel 2025 – Call for volunteers
Dear PlanetS members and associates,
Once again, PlanetS will return to Fantasy Basel – the Swiss Comic-con – and we need you!
This year marks the 30th anniversary of 51 Peg b discovery, so exoplanets will be our main focus! But rest assured that all of planetary sciences will be represented!
The festival will be held on Ascension’s week-end from Thursday (holiday) 29th until Saturday 31th of May 2025. Last year, the event welcomed 88 000 visitors over the course of the weekend, from which at least 12 000 attendees interacted directly with us at our booth! For those of you not familiar with the event, it is one of the major Swiss (and European) gathering, over 100 000m2, for fans of movies, fantasy, science-fiction, video games, high-tech, comics, manga, and – thanks to PlanetS and our numerous partners – fans of science too!
The Space Sector will again be over 1000m2 of exhibition coordinated by our long-term partner: the Swiss Space Museum (SSM), and with the participation of other partners (Organisations, students associations, institutes, etc.). As usual, PlanetS will focus on experiments and interactive features for the public (e.g. planetariums). The Space Stage will be back with a packed schedule of public lectures (and you could be one of those!), and we’ll see the return of the Space Science Lounge with comfy sofas to layback and chat about science in a relaxed settings.
We would like to encourage you to join PlanetS as volunteers at our booth. Of course, we cover all expenses to come. Such events for the general public are hugely important, as they give us the opportunity to disseminate more about our fascinating research. It’s about bringing our work closer to the audience, who are the people (if a reminder was necessary) enabling our work to be funded thanks to taxes. Everyone – no matter what language you speak, scientist or not – is welcome to be a part of the event. Below you will find more information about the event, details on how to participate, expenses covered, etc.
If you are willing to join, please fill out this form, or if you have further questions, contact thibaut.roger@unibe.ch. Please register as soon as possible, at the latest by Monday, 31st of March before 3PM.
Fantasy Basel is an amazing event to interact with the public in a unique atmosphere and the communication team and myself hope you will be numerous to join us again this year! This is a great opportunity for all of us to show people that real science can be, at least as, if not more, exiting than science fiction.
Impressions from some previous editions:
- Fantasy Basel 2024 Album 1 and Album 2.
- Fantasy Basel 2023 Album 1 and Album 2.
- Fantasy Basel 2022 https://nccr-planets.ch/blog/2022/06/01/science-is-even-more-fascinating-than-sci-fi/
- Fantasy Basel 2021 https://nccr-planets.ch/blog/2021/10/20/where-predator-and-pikachu-learn-about-exoplanets/
- Fantasy Basel 2019 https://nccr-planets.ch/blog/2019/05/03/fantasy-basel-we-were-there/
Thank you in advance for your participation.
Kind regards,
Thibaut Roger, on behalf of the organising team.
Volunteering at Fantasy Basel PlanetS stand – Some information
1. Basic information
Event
Fantasy Basel, the Swiss Comic-Con, is an established event aimed at a broad audience, spread over 100 000m2 of exhibitions. The topics revolve around science-fiction, fantasy, anime, cosplay, and more. PlanetS has been an integral part of the event for several years now and every time surprises the audience with science, and shows how exciting research is in reality, often as much as science-fiction!
For more information on the event: https://www.fantasybasel.ch
Dates and public opening hours
- Thursday, 29 May until Saturday, 31 May – 9:30-19:00 hrs
Our exhibitor pass enables us to access the centre at 9:00 already. As such, PlanetS volunteers covering the first shift are asked to arrive half an hour before public opening. - Set up: Wednesday, 28 May, 12:00-18:00 hrs – It is most welcomed if a couple of people volunteering on Thursday can also help setting up on Wednesday.
- Dismantling: Saturday, 31 May, 19:00-22:00 hrs – This is the maximum duration, the more help, the faster it goes (last year was done in under 1h30!).
Venue
Messe Basel, Messeplatz 10, 4005 Basel
There is a direct tram from the Basel train-station.
2. Exhibition
The Space Sector this year will spread over 1000m2. NCCR PlanetS will be sharing this large space with the Swiss Space Museum, as well as other partners! About a quarter of the area will be the PlanetS interactive features such as experiments and planetariums. Exhibition from the Swiss Space Museum will fill roughly another quarter, Finally, all the other partners will share the rest of the area with each their own exhibition area. One of the central attraction will be the 1:4 scale model of JWST from Swiss Space Museum and sponsored by the NCCR PlanetS.
Just like last year, the space sector will also have its own ±150 seats stage! Equipped with a big screen/sound systems and chairs for the public. Each day, the public will be able to see talks, round-tables and panels, and more.
A first sketch of this year’s Space Sector floor map.
3. Your job
Volunteers are expected to stay at the stand for half a day (6h), either at the welcome desk (to direct people and provide free goodies – posters, postcards, etc.), at one of the experiment stations, near PlanetS related exhibits (e.g., CHEOPS or JUICE models), or operating the planetarium. Note that you will not be stuck to the same activity all day, you are welcome and even encouraged to move from one to the other during your shift(s), rotating with the other volunteers. We also encourage you to organise with the other volunteers to take a couple of small (max 10 minutes) breaks during your shift. You will note that “morning” and “afternoon” shifts are overlapping during 2 hours, to allow for lunch break for everyone.
A note for the stage: for interested volunteers, there are two scheduled mini talks sessions. They consist of 2-3 mini talks (10-15 minutes each followed by Q&A with the public) about planetary sciences, space or astronomy, preferably in English, but also in German (or French). This is not mandatory at all though. If you want to participate in this, email Thibaut before the 31st of March!!!
More details will follow regarding the activities, to the registered participants.
For this year we plan on having a single planetarium. We plan to continuously run 15-20min shows every 30 minutes, in English or German (upon volunteers’ availability for this task). The goal is to run ± the same show related to the theme of this year exhibition (exoplanets), whomever is the volunteer operating the telescope (the exact programme will be communicated before the event). If you have never operated the planetarium, it should not be a problem as we should have the possibility to program a script that require minimum knowledge (that you can acquire in ~5 minutes on the spot) to operate.
4. Ideas for experiments
We have a few experiments planned already. If you have any ideas of experiments or interactive exhibitions ideas though, please drop us a message as soon as possible.
5. This is what you get
Volunteers will be refunded for their travel (train), as well as lunch (per diem). They will also receive a PlanetS T-shirt (if they don’t already have one from last editions) to wear during the event, and that they can keep afterward. Bottled water (and usually snacks) will be available for the volunteers.
In case of attendance for multiple consecutive days, dinner will be refunded and a hotel or airBnB night (up to 150CHF/night/person, breakfast included). Volunteers have to arrange for their hotel, after approval from the organisation team. We strongly encourage sharing hotel rooms, so you can pick some of the closest hotel while staying within the afore-mentioned price range.
You will also be provided with a free ticket for the event, the day of your volunteering, in exchange for 6h of presence at the stand. This is an exhibitor pass which allow to avoid queue to enter the event. The rest of the day you will be free to enjoy the event! We thus encourage volunteers covering the second shift, to also arrive at 9:00 in the morning if they would like to have the most time to visit the rest of the event. Volunteers covering 2+ days are provided with a 3-days exhibitor pass to the event enabling them to also enjoy the third day of the event for free. You will be able to check out the Fantasy Basel programme at the following address once its made available (currently still 2024 schedule): https://fantasybasel.ch/en/daily-program
If you are willing to join, please fill out this form, or contact thibaut.roger@unibe.ch if you have any questions. Please do so as soon as possible, by Monday the 31st of March before 3PM at the maximum.
Based on the interest from previous years, please note that we have a limited budget and number of volunteers who can join. In case there are too many volunteers (though we never had too many so far!) we will select volunteers on a first come first serve base or might limit volunteering to a single day.
6. Mini-talks
Directly next to our stand we will have a stage with 150-200 seats, a giant screen, a sound system and 2 dedicated technicians. Besides some talks, some panels and round-tables with some guests, we will have two sessions composed of 2 or 3 mini-talks (10min/talk) in a row, followed by a joint question time.
There is no requirement to give such a mini-talk, but anyone is welcome to volunteer for one. (We discourage reusing the ones from the very last edition, but those from 2 years ago or more are welcome).
As it is for the general public, your talk does not have to be on your research topic or even planetary sciences. It can be more general on elements of astronomy, astrophysics or space/satellite sciences.
Please provide a catchy title for your potential talk, by Monday 31st of March, directly to Thibaut Roger. It should be catchy for the public, not for other scientists, so don’t hesitate to overdo it! Mini-talks will be selected depending on availability of the stage and presence days, etc. but we so far always managed on previous years to get a slot for everyone interested.
Precise schedule and technical details for stage will be sent in the information e-mail for the volunteers (typically one or two weeks before the event).
7. Additional information
Volunteers will receive, in due time before the event, further information such as the experiments descriptions, stage schedule, planetarium show script, etc.
For the duration of the event, we will also create a WhatsApp group that will enable to coordinate our action on the spot, and share again elements that are handy to have on the smartphones, such as the access plans, etc. Please indicate in the signing sheet if you agree to be added to this group, it will not be used for other communication purposes.
If you have any questions in the meantime, on any aspects, don’t hesitate to contact Thibaut Roger who is in charge of coordinating the PlanetS participation to the event: thibaut.roger@unibe.ch.
The visual of this year Space Sector
