Each year since 2009, visitors to the World Science Festival's Street Fair in New York City have experienced the Math Midway, a large and crowded carnival filled with mathematical toys and activities such as square-wheeled bicycles you can ride on a cycloidal track and plastic polyhedral solids that reveal surprising cross sections when you shine laser light through them. The Math Midway is one of many successful components unique to the World Science Festival, which the Sloan Foundation helped launch though its program on the Public Understanding of Science and Technology. Most science festivals struggle to present any kind of compelling mathematical content at all. The creators of Math Midway would now like to share what they have built, as well as what they have learned, with science festival planners and participants throughout the country. Funds from this grant will support efforts by Museum of Mathematics founder Glen Whitney to develop up to 20 portable versions of the Math Midway exhibitions that can travel to science and mathematics festivals across the country. The Science Festival Alliance, a Sloan Foundation grantee, has already arranged for these exhibits to be displayed and tested by organizations operating under its umbrella, including science festivals in San Diego, Philadelphia, Harlem, Cambridge, and the Bay Area. The project will also train local mathematicians to staff these exhibitions. Independent evaluation of the construction, deployment, and reception of the first six such kits is also part of the project plan under this grant, and will help clarify what works and what next steps might make sense going forward to enhance public engagement with mathematics.

This grant to the Science Festival Foundation will provide support for the planning, development, and production of the fourth World Science Festival , a five-day series of speakers, panels, exhibits and events hosted throughout New York City which aims to contribute to a shift in the public perception of science, making manifest how science is as indispensible to a rich life as other cultural mainstays like music, theatre, art, dance and literature. Grant funds will also support the Science Festival Foundation's implementation of the first phase of its three-year Strategic Plan and Business Development initiative, which aims to develop a revenue model to ensure the Festival's long-term sustainability and to expand the Festival's impact through various channels: including the use of live, digital, and broadcast platforms; national and international partnerships, and educational outreach.

Funds from this grant support a pilot project by Michael Schwarz of Kikim Media to produce and distribute six short web videos to accompany new scientific papers that appear in the Public Library of Science. The proposed videos-each five to seven minutes long-aim to translate the latest scientific findings into a broadly accessible language that can reach a wider audience than those who currently read academic science journals.

The first two World Science Festivals (WSF), in which Sloan played the initiatory role and then was one of two key early funders, have been major successes. The 2009 WSF sold out virtually every event and achieved massive media penetration. The WSF embodies the Sloan program in public understanding of science and technology and employs many similar modalities. All the institutions of higher learning in New York, along with the major art museums, science halls, cultural centers and performance spaces, play host to this city-wide science festival and bring their traditional audiences into the tent. Co-founders Alan Alda and Brian Greene appeared as hosts and eloquent spokespeople for the value and impact of science in our culture. This new request, at the same level as the first two years, includes $100,000 to support two new Sloan events for 2010 plus $100,000 earmarked for the development of a three to five year Strategic Plan and Business Development Initiative that will focus on the long?term growth, expansion and stability of the World Science Festival. The Foundation has supported the Science Festival Foundation since 2006 with total grants of $1,345,000.