Community Science: Advancing Community Priorities Together
Understanding Community Science
Our world faces a multitude of challenges at the intersection of science and society, from climate change to health inequities to rapidly developing technologies. But too often opportunities and solutions at this nexus fail to center communities that are most impacted and hold the deepest understanding of community needs.
Community science is a way of working where community members collaborate with each other, scientists, science engagement practitioners, and others to advance community priorities through scientific research, technological innovation, and more.
Community science offers a wide range of approaches, including dialogue, data collection, and civic engagement, that address injustices, reduce disparities, and help achieve equity informed by community priorities, strengths, and leadership.
Watch a brief community science overview video and click the button below to learn more!
Community Science in Action
Grassroots data collection efforts and open source tools to help assess environmental impacts
Public Lab
Collecting air quality data to help drive city level climate resiliency
RVAir at Science Museum of Virginia
Diverse partnership empowers local voices to influence climate resiliency planning
Cycles of Resilience from the science and resilience institute at Jamaica Bay
Community science encompasses a wide array of approaches that communities and their partners use to answer science- and technology-related questions and construct solutions. Download our brief overview to learn more about the diverse models and approaches to community science that are currently in use.
Our framework for Community Science features a set of attributes and outcomes that are centered around doing respectful work with communities and pursuing authentic, equitable partnerships.
ASTC's Dialogue & Deliberation Toolkit serves as a roadmap to help you navigate resources produced by a diversity of civic engagement and science engagement organizations that lay a solid foundation for the development of Dialogue & Deliberation efforts on topics relevant to local communities.
Join our Community Science Clinics, bi-monthly virtual events for community science practitioners at all levels of experience to talk with their peers and seek advice from colleagues working on community science efforts. Each clinic will focus on a different theme, be grounded by short “discussion sparks”, and use smaller breakouts to further discussion.
About ASTC and Community Science
ASTC’s Community Science Initiative, including this website’s information and resources, aims to build capacity for and scale the practice of community science among science and technology centers and museums and allied science engagement organizations.
Our goal is to describe a set of broad and inclusive community science attributes, outcomes, and approaches applicable to ASTC members as well as other organizations, while providing distinct examples, resources, and tools to support efforts within science and technology center and museum contexts.
Learn more about ASTC’s approach to community science and how ASTC’s Community Science Initiative is working to support community science within science and technology centers and museums.