The year 2026 marked the 10th anniversary of the Association for Science Communicator’s SCIENCE TALK conference. To celebrate a decade of serving as the hub for the professional science communication community, Laura Guertin and Melanie Peffer presented an opportunity for SCIENCE TALK ‘26 attendees to create a quilt block representing what science communication and the ASC community means to them.
During the Poster & Art networking session on Thursday evening of the conference, attendees discovered a table filled with fabric markers and blank white fabric squares. These 5-inch squares were the canvas for each person to share their science communication stories. Some participants shared stories about their research, others about their science communication interests, and some about the ASC community as a whole.
To construct the quilt top, the white fabric squares were sewn together in a standard grid layout. The first square in the top left corner has the names of the ASC leaders guiding us through this landscape through programming, mentorship, and more. Talktopus, the unofficial mascot of ASC, was placed in the lower right corner, providing a foundation from the “deep ocean” for all 48 examples of science communication generated at the conference. The light blue border was quilted with a wave stitch to represent how ASC members are generating ripples of advancing scientific literacy through a range of communication tools and approaches.
This quilt serves as a snapshot of the topics and organizations that are a priority among the membership during ASC’s 10th year. Just as conference attendees were offered a chance to contribute a science story by drawing on a fabric square, now attendees and the ASC membership as a whole have the opportunity to share the quilt and its story with a larger audience.
Quilt with contributions from Science Talk ‘26 attendees.
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