Scientific Center of Kuwait Recieved 8 Millionth Visitor On-track with Major Expansion

Interview with Nawaf A. Al Rudaini, Marketing and Public Relations Manager of Kuwait Scientific Center

Please tell us about your future projects. What do you intend to do in 2015 and 2016? What are your main priorities in marketing and branding? Your strategy.

We have a very busy year coming up in 2015. We are going to start in the first of week of January with the launch of an IMAX film called Titans of the Ice Age. We are launching it to coincide with the spring break here for local schools. We will follow that with one of the travelling exhibits that we bring in every 6 months to the Scientific Center inside Discovery Place. It’s called Bon Appetit. It’s an interactive exhibit about food, how to eat healthy, how to stay healthy, how to stay strong. It’s designed for families and school children. It’s for students to learn about healthy eating habits through the interactive exhibits.

In the first week of February we will be launching a one month exhibit called 1001 Inventions. This is an internationally renowned exhibit from the UK. It’s an interactive exhibit about a 1000 years of Islamic inventions and their impact on current day technology, science, medicine, astronomy, and all other areas of life. This exhibit is very unique and exciting. It’s going to be new to the area and is limited to one month only. It will be placed outside of the Scientific Center’s premises. It’s too large for us to accommodate it. We are building a temporary structure outside to exhibit it.

After that we will have construction of our new expansion project which we hope to complete and open by 2018.

The expansion will occupy about 22,000 to 25,000 square meters. It will be attached to the current building and will have a new Discovery Place. Actually we will have 2 Discovery Places, one for the permanent exhibits on different scientific themes and another gallery for travelling exhibits, the ones that we change every 6 months or so. We will have a big Marine Mammal Center, with many tanks and many marine mammals.

We will also have a 500 to 600 seat Dolphin Stadium where our visitors will be able to see state of the art dolphin shows. These will be unique shows, not what people are accustomed to. Usually they have dolphins jumping through hoops and heading balls thrown by trainers. This show will be more technologically advanced and will involve a lot more media and audio visual equipment for lighting and laser shows. Another special section will allow visitors to swim and interact with dolphins. It will be the first facility of its kind in Kuwait. We will also have a new conference and convention center within the new building. We will have an auditorium, a multi function hall and a number of meeting rooms that can accommodate conferences, meetings and special events.

Back in 2012, your concern was to attract more corporate visitors and sponsors. Have you been able to resolve those past challenges? What are your upcoming challenges in this area?

We still find it difficult in the area of securing corporate sponsorship. We have manged to secure some for the 1001 Inventions project. As for the IMAX movies and Discovery Place exhibits, we are still having difficulties in securing funds and sponsorship. We depend on our normal funding for that. We are still trying though. We are still knocking on doors to relay our message to potential sponsors and investors.

Why are they hesitant to sponsor the programs?

That’s a good question. We have contacted pretty much all the big companies in Kuwait. For instance, one of our recent exhibits, Math Alive! Is sponsored by an American company that cares about technology and sciences and military usages. It’s Raytheon. They are very interested in developing science and technology for civil works.

They were associated with Math Alive! to start with. They had no problem coming to the Scientific Center as full sponsors of that exhibit. There are companies that see the potential of partnering with the Scientific Center. In the end, it just comes down to dollars and cents. From the companies‘ perspective, they look at the bigger picture for them. When we look at sponsorship of scientific centers, IMAX films, Discovery Place exhibits around the world, potential sponsors aim to support science and education. Companies in Kuwait aim mostly at building their own name and image, so they focus on what best accomplishes this goal for them.

Do you want to explain why they are not supporting science?

If you visit science centers in different parts of the world, you will see they have corporate sponsors and individual donors. The companies and individuals believe in science, in innovation. They believe their support will help develop science and technology and encourage innovation. Their support helps bring science exhibits to those facilities, to benefit the population, the audience. In Kuwait, companies focus more on building their brand and name, polishing their image. The main target audience in Kuwait is young people. Companies in Kuwait use other avenues to reach this audience, be it shopping malls or cinemaplexes.

In your opinion should they be more supportive of the Kuwait Scientific Center? And what are the advantages?

The advantage for the sponsor when they support us is that they become involved in the spread of science, environmental awareness etc.

We receive more than 650,000 visitors per year.

This is not on par with shopping malls that recive tens of millions of visitors, of course. This is a big difference in mumbers, so they will see the value of going somewhere else, rather than the Scientific Center. Perhaps the numbers don’t appeal them.

In Kuwait, there isn‘t a strong interest in learning science, mathematics and technology. Very few Kuwaiti school children are interested in a career in science, mathematics or technology. This is because when they look at their futures, an education in the sciences doesn’t have much relevance to them. Science based subjects like physics, chemistry, biology, astronomy, geology, have a heavy workload. We are not an industrial country.

We don’t have manufacturing industry to depend on. We don’t have scientific research establishments other than the Kuwait Institute of Scientific Research or at Kuwait University. Most college science graduates will end up working at one of the universities, with very limited research facilities. Or they become school teachers. There isn’t a wide range of opportunities for mathematics and science graduates. That’s why there isn’t a great deal of interest in those areas of education. That’s why we don’t see a lot of support or donors in those areas.

What are your other main challenges?

We are a private entity. We depend solely on our income to support ourselves and subsidise all our expenses. We don’t receive any grants or support from the government. We don’t receive support from any other entitities either. We have to depend on our ticket sales and rental income from the restaurants, coffee shops and different shops here, sales from our gift shop, and the sponsorships we receive every once in a while for one of our activities. That’s how we balance our budget at the end of the year. If our income falls short of our expenses it has a big effect on us down the road, in the future.

Have you been able to successfully balance the budget?

We have been breaking even for the last few years. Nothing more than that.

Does that include the expenses for future projects?

Our future expansion project is completely funded by the Kuwait Foundation for the Expansion of Science, which is our mother company. They are the ones who established the Scientific Center. They will be funding the expansion because the Scientific Center will not be able to fund such a large project itself.

The Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Science is also sponsoring the Dasman Diabetes Institute, correct?

Well it’s not sponsorship. They are the ones who built it and funded it, like the Scientific Center. They did the same thing with the Sabah Al-Ahmad Center for Giftedness, for inventors and gifted students. It’s also a center that encourages students to be innovative and inventive. They also have the new Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Center for Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imaging. Those are the four centers that they fund and support. It’s not sponsorship. They build and establish and take their hands off, let it become independant.

What about your visitor numbers? Have they grown?

Our visitor numbers have grown through the years. We started with a little less than 400,000 visitors per year.

This increased to about 650,000 by the end of 2013. Midway through 2014, we received our 8 millionth visitor.

That is 8 million visitors in 14 years since we were established. It was a great achievement. When you look at the overall population of Kuwait and you average the percentage of visitors, you realise it is a high number of visitors. A lot of scientific centers around the world are envious of our numbers, considering that we are not a touristic country. Most scientific centers around the world are in large, touristic cities. They depend on tourism and school children. We depend on school children and locals visiting Kuwait City. Tourism is minimal in Kuwait. We cannot depend on the tourist market. We take pride in having repeated local visitors at the Scientific Center. This means we are creating something that is worth coming back to see.

Do you feel that Kuwait has a long way to go in the support of the sciences?

There are some efforts from the governement to support science.

But you mentioned that the corporate sector is not very keen on supporting science.

Eventually, when they see the trends, they will become more interested in supporting science and technology. But at the moment it is not a big field of interest in Kuwait. So the coprorate sector will not follow this path. But as the country as a whole takes more steps to develop science and technology, encouraging more young people to take it up as a future, and establish more centers for education in these fields, then we will see the corporate sector moving towards more sponsorship in this field. The Scientific Center opened in 2000. So far we are the only science center in Kuwait.

The Ministry of Education had a Science Museum. It is now an obsolete facility. The options for science learning and education outside the classroom in Kuwait is limited to the Scientific Center. Around the world, there are a lot of science opportunities, everywhere. In Kuwait and the Middle East in general, there are not many scienctific education facilities or edutainment facilities. We have one in Kuwait and a handful in the Gulf region another handful in the MENA region. It should be a regional effort. The Scientific Center believes in spreading science education and preserving science as an interest and a career opportunity. That’s why we have partnered with 4 other science centers in the region, one in Saudi Arabia, one in Turkey, one in Alexandria, Egypt and one in Tunisia back in 2006.

We established the North Africa and Middle East Scientific Network (NAMES). This has become a very active and important network in the region. We have grown from 5 facilities to 14 facilities. We encourage science centers in the region to join up as soon as they announce their opening. We work with different networks around the world to gain experience, to collaborate. The last one was with ECSITE, which is the European network of science centers, institutes and museums.

NAMES collaborated with them over the summer of 2013 to come up with a Summer School for participants of both networks. Such collaboration helps us gain from the experience of those who are ahead of us in this field. NAMES is working diligently to create collaborations with science center networks and communities around the world, to encourage science education in this region.

What is the most important message you want to communicate to your audience, if you had a magic stick to reach them?

I would send a message to the parents in Kuwait. What their children learn in school is very important but the parents role at home is equally important. We should not depend only on teachers to inform our children. Parents need to become more active in their childrens‘ educational lives.

What the Scientific Center offers is an opportunity to enhance their scientific horizon. What we offer is an opportunity for extra learning, to learn something other than what they learn at school. Yes it is a fun place to visit but they also learn something from their visit. We’d like the parents to spend time and interact with their children in the Scientific Center. Parents need to understand what the Center has to offer and relay the message back to their children.

They can talk to their children after a visit to the Scientific Center and create an understanding of the things they saw here. For example, our latest exhibit, Math Alive!. It’s about the importance of mathematics in our lives, how it surrounds us in our daily life. We don’t just want the children to come and try the exhibits. We would like their parents to come with them and go through the exhibits together.

They can interact with their children about it, on their way back home, over dinner the next day or at any time. If they can discuss the learning experience, the children’s understanding of the scientific theories behind the exhibits, it will help reinforce the information in the child’s mind.  It will be a good education exchange for the parents and the family. It’s always a joint effort, whether between the Scientific Center and the family or the school and the family. We shouldn’t depend completely on the schools to teach our children. We, as parents have an important role to play in their education.

Using the same magic stick, if you could reach investors in Kuwait or internationally, people who can help you with funding for new projects, what would you like to communicate to them?

I think it’s very important for Kuwaiti corporations to take a more active role in supporting the Scientific Center and its mission. New exhibits and new films are our way of trying to provide science education in a fun and interesting way. We aim to be a tourist attraction that people will visit when they visit Kuwait.

We would like corporations in Kuwait join hands with the Center in making this possible. We provide a unique experience, unparallelled in Kuwait. We provide science, technology, education, entertainment, fun in a friendly, family atmosphere. It’s a safe environment for children. You don’t have to leave them be here, you can interact with them in the exhibits. The IMAX theater, the aquarium are wonderful experiences.

It’s like entering dreamland. The atmosphere in the aquarium is so relaxing, you can take some time off from the world and it’s troubles, lose yourself in the moment. The Scientific Center provides a very unique experience. Once the corporations in Kuwait realise that, they will certainly want to be a part of it.

Can you tell us briefly about the new exhibits you will have in the new year? Tell us something about the Titans of the Ice Age.

Titans of the Ice Age isa 3D IMAX film about the life of the wooly mammoth and other giant animals that lived about 10,000 years ago. You can see that what are now civilized, urbanized parts of the world were then just flat, frozen land. It is about human and animal life in those days, how they survived and what happened about then to change things. It’s a unique perspective on a topic we don’t pay much attention to.