Scotland at Expo 2020 Dubai: evaluation report

Section 10: Wider Engagement

UK National Day

UK's National Day at Expo was delivered on 10 February 2022. To secure Scottish representation facilitated engagement was driven by the Scotland Expo team lead in collaboration with SG Cultural Policy stakeholders and UK National Day leads. This collaborative effort ensured Scotland's representation by:

• Spelfie – who used their digital and space satellite technology expertise to capture the National Day event activities from space.
• The Association of Exiled Scots - who provided entertainment in the form of Scottish Folk Music, Step Dancing, Poetry and Pipers at various venues across the Expo site.
• Daisy Chute (Scottish Folk Singer) who won UK DIT's Lowden Guitars competition to perform at Expo on National Day
• Grove Academy Secondary School in Dundee were Scotland's represented school as part of the UK's Debate Mate event.

Spelfie's involvement in particular raised Scotland's profile across local and global media – Chris Newlands, CEO - being the "spokesperson" for the entire UK National Day on Sky News Arabia's morning news segment.

UK Breakthrough Moments

The Scotland team engaged with UKG at the earliest stages to ensure inclusion of some thirty speakers within the UK programme. This far exceeded the contracted agreement for three slots. Representation was strong with leading speakers and experts from our Scottish Universities, Innovation Centres and Companies, and particularly in Scotland's key sectors.

EXPO 2020 World Majilis Programme

Scotland were represented by three leading speakers and experts in their field:

• Professor Asit Biswas (Distinguished Professor The University of Glasgow) - Expo Water Week: World Majlis | The Price of Water | World Expo (virtualexpodubai.com)
• Don Maclean (founder and CEO of Integrated Environmental Solutions) - Expo xxx Week: World Majlis | Digital Twins | World Expo (virtualexpodubai.com)
• Catherine Haymans (Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh) - Expo Space Week - The People's Mission: Citizens in Space Exploration | World Expo (virtualexpodubai.com)

UK Permanent Exhibition also included some examples however whilst time and resource was spent on providing case studies of Scottish Innovation in the form of digital content the physical execution from the UK was disappointing and the visitor experience fell short of expectations.