Nau mai, haere mai ki Smiley Science

Smiley Science is all about direct science engagement and helping people understand complex science concepts.

With hands-on science demonstrations and activities, image-rich science talks, and personally-guided stargazing and telescope tours of the night sky, we let you connect directly with the awe of real-life science.

The density of the science in each of our experiences is adjusted to suit audiences young and old, for any level of science knowledge, and most locations.

Along with pre-designed experiences, we would love to work with you to craft one around your idea or research.

You can try one of our Smiley Live! experiences, Smiley Talks or (soon) Smiley Astronomy.

If you’d like to get in touch about working together on an event, exhibition, talk, or collaboration, click here.

Kia ora e te whānau. I’m Colin, the founder and Chief Nerd of Smiley Science.

I don’t like talking about myself, I’d rather talk about stars, but the short version is: Smiley Science is dedicated to my parents.

The longer version:

Thanks to my dad, I learned that the best way to understand something myself was to try to explain it to someone else. And it was also almost always more fun, too.

Pretty soon I realised the part I loved the most was sharing those complicated, cool, or awesome things with other people (and my mum was the poor recipient of a lot of it!)

I found that the more I knew and understood something around me, and especially the WHY of it, the more amazing it became.

Ten years ago, stars were inconsequential, tiny, random dots to me. Now, they are familiar friends, whose dot-to-dot patterns I long to see when I go out at night.

Distant pinpoints of light became raging nuclear reactors to me, with unknown alien worlds orbiting them, sitting within an incomprehensibly-huge galaxy, stuffed with innumerably more suns, all of which made up just one galaxy among possibly trillions…

After working in several museums and science centres, I learned (to misquote a friend of mine) that surrounding myself with smart people and being allowed to find fun ways to share cool stuff with a wider audience was a ‘superpower’. 

So, yeah, I started Smiley Science to help others also find something for themselves — that’s what gives me my daily sense of mīharo and wonder. And makes me go all cheesy like this.

Come and join me on some scientific tangents, and find your own mīharo.

Ngā mihi nui,

Colin Smillie (pronounced Smiley)