Spacey Comedians & Storytellers: Soft Skills for the Global Space Workforce
- Paper number
IAC-17,E1,5,15,x41678
- Year
2017
- Abstract
The global space industry naturally attracts highly intelligent and educated graduates from a range of hard-science and engineering disciplines. The competitive and exacting nature of these disciplines means graduates often spend much of their time surrounded only by others studying or working in the same field, encouraging an insular lone-discipline mindset at odds with the multi-disciplinary requirements of the global space industry. Stand-up comedians, storytellers and performing artists offer the ideal professional support to foster the interpersonal and communication soft skills critical to long-term success in the space industry and confront this destructive mindset. Through the International Space University's 2016 "Southern Hemisphere Summer Space Program" in Adelaide (Australia) and the 2016 "Summer Space Program" in Haifa (Israel); workshops for program participants on team building, presentation skills, media training, and science communication were delivered or supported by a comedian and storyteller with 8 years professional performance experience. The findings of these workshops will be delivered in this paper, along with lessons learned and recommendations for future engagement of performing artists to promote soft skills in the global space workforce.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)