Université de Tours – Institut National de recherche pour l’agriculture, l’alimentation et l’environnement

The BAW in Tours in 2021 was organized during the COVID19 pandemic and all “physical” meetings with general public, pupils or student were not allowed. All meeting rooms were closed. Therefore we removed all manifestations in presence of persons (workshop, exhibitions…) and we organized the lectures and discussions as webinars. Our goals and objectives, that are to reach local public and to show, not only but also local sciences, were changed. The interactions were decreased and we lost a part of our older and local public which is not familiar with numeric tools, but we enlarged our audience and we gained public from all the country and from other European countries. Our program contained lectures about present societal concerns such as neurosciences and education, brain and environment and brain or psychiatric disorders. After each lecture we kept large time for questions, and numerous attendees, students, caregivers as well as professional of education, participated to the discussions. Since most of all manifestations in France were webinars, there was a great offer of subjects during this week, but also a competition between organizing cities. It was the case for the lecture about brain and environment which took place on Tuesday simultaneously with a lecture on the same topic in Orléans. According to the health conditions and the numerous meeting restrictions, we consider the BAW in Tours was successful.

The most immediate outcomes was the contact of students searching information for their futures studies.

Think the possibility to organize manifestations in the presence of public or as webinars.