Daylight Awareness Week 2024 – videos, podcasts and more now available!

Public events at Berlin Science Week

This year, for the first time, Daylight Awareness Week broke the online fence and organised several public events in cooperation with the Berlin Science Week festival. At the Museum fur Naturkunde in Berlin, we conveyed daylight knowledge to all age groups through various formats.

Panel discussion – Daylight: The unknown priority in urban planning

Five experts from a wide range of disciplines discussed the importance of daylight in our lives and for the environment while asking how the lack of it challenges modern cities. This 90-minute debate included insights from the fields of health psychology, plant ecology, daylighting, environmental humanities and architecture, with several interesting points also being brought up during the public Q&A session. The debate was inspired by the recently published paper: “Why daylight should be a priority for urban planning“

Workshop on daylight’s superpowers

A special workshop was organised for children between the ages of 4-10 and their parents. As the aspiring young researchers discovered the many facets of light with exciting experiments and creative activities, their parents learned about how daylight influences our everyday lives and how we can make targeted use of it. Visitors of the event can check out pictures from the workshop here.

Exhibition on Colour of the Sky

Visitors of Berlin Science Week’s two-day CAMPUS festival hub also had the opportunity to learn about and contribute to an ongoing daylight research project as Dr. Martine Knoop from the Technical University Berlin showed the images she has captured around the world for the Colour of the Sky project. You can learn more about the project here.

Webinar, podcasts & articles

Each day of Daylight Awareness Week was dedicated towards exploring a special topic through relevant events and content.

Webinar – Geographies of Light

Focusing on the topic of daylight’s role in our health, a special webinar was organised in collaboration with artist and researcher Dr. Jo Joelson. In this interdisciplinary talk on the geographies of light we look at the impact of seasonal light on human behaviour, health and well-being, how light affects our perception of place, and at the role of creative practice in understanding these relationships.

Aside from videos and photographs of the events, there are still many more new resources you can access, including articles and podcast episodes focusing on daylight’s role in healthy sleep or on the importance of the natural night/dark cycle for our well-being. Find them all in the highlights on our Daylight Awareness Week 2024 webpage.

A special thanks to DarkSky International, as well as the CHRONO:MEDICINE and the Light O’Clock podcasts for collaborating with us to bring you further written and recorded content!