Brain Awareness Week
Engaging Activities for Adults

Event Ideas

Here are some activities that are ideal for reaching adult audiences:

• Set up and staff an exhibit table at a local hospital, doctors’ office, senior center, or shopping mall with the Dana Foundation’s free handouts [link to BAW Resources]. Print and share our fact sheets and puzzles.
• Ask your local library to organize a Brain Awareness Week display with books and reference material about the brain or offer to set up your own display.
• Coordinate a lecture or panel discussion. Consider choosing a theme and organizing several talks on related topics.
• Broaden the reach of your lecture or panel discussion by streaming it live on your website or social media.
• Organize a science café in a casual setting such as a coffeehouse or pub and feature an engaging conversation with a neuroscientist.
• Coordinate a music, dance, or theatrical performance and follow it with a lecture or discussion on creativity or music and the brain.
• Organize an exercise program and follow it with a lecture or discussion on the brain benefits of physical activity.
• Create traveling displays or interactive exhibits on the brain and present them at community centers, libraries, shopping malls, and other public spaces.
• Organize a brain fair with hands-on activities and experiments, poster presentations, health screenings, and more. Invite local colleges/universities and disease advocacy groups to participate.
• If your organization is a research facility, hold lab tours for the public to inform and excite them about the research being done in their local community.
• Hold an open house to introduce your organization’s work to your local community.
• Coordinate a workshop for school teachers on a brain-related topic.
• Organize a film festival featuring movies about the brain. Some popular films include Awakenings, Memento, Inside Out, and A Clockwork Orange. Follow each film with a brief lecture or Q&A session with a brain expert.
• Partner with a science museum to present exhibits, demonstrations, hands-on activities, and experiments about brain structure, function, and diseases and disorders. Find out what programming they may already have available on the brain.
• Team up with local businesses to sponsor classes and workshops for employees to raise awareness about brain function and fitness, brain diseases, and disorders.