# Science Cafes, Science Shops and the Lockdown Experience in Florence and Rome+
## 1 Introduction  
The lockdown after the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has affected many aspects of life, especially for what concerns all activities that imply contact and sharing of information. In particular, Italy was one of the first nations to experience the complete blockage of in-person encounters, for as long as two months (from 9 th March to 3 rd May). The effectivity of restriction measures depends on their degree of acceptance by citizens, which in turn depends on the information available, both coming from \"official\" channels and gathered through social media or other individual ways. In Italy, almost all journal and broadcast media insisted on enforcing the restriction measures, but several \"underground\" criticisms spread out in social media such as WhatsApp, increasing in time with the decrease of the \"risk perception\" and the will/need of restoring some aspects of \"normal\" social life. Indeed, there is a strong, albeit poorly documented in quantitative terms, interplay between the spreading characteristics of a disease and the individual behavior; for instance, despite the huge return to their families in South Italy of people escaping from the forecasted quarantine in North Italy (around the 21 st of February 2020), very few cases finally manifested, possibly due to a self-imposed quarantine, or at least to a careful obedience to imposed restrictions. The effects of the risk perception on the mitigation of an epidemics is introduced (in modeling) in Ref. [1], studied in Refs. [2; 3] (see also Ref. [4]), and, for what concerns the COVID-19 pandemics, in Ref. [5]. The authorities were quite concerned by the possibility of a massive non-observance of the restrictions but could only exploit massive campaigns on mass-media. In addition, many entertainment companies and social organizations tried to contribute, for instance setting up online events and shows. The organization of rational discussions and reflection was much more difficult. In general, the main difficulty encountered is that of involving citizens. This is particularly true for activities and projects concerning sustainability and social promotion themes, for which involved citizens are supposed to modify their habits. For instance, many projects about Collective Awareness Platforms for Sustainability and Social Innovation (CAPS) started with quite innovative ideas but failed due to the lack of participation [6; 7; 8; 9; 10]. In Florence and Rome, two associations of volunteers (Caffe-Scienza Firenze and FormaScienza Roma) are devoted to organizing public debates, in the spirit of science cafes, as illustrated in Section 2. In particular, the Florence association is in strict contact with the Interdepartmental Center for the Study of Complex Dynamics (CSDC) [11] of the University of Florence [12]. The science cafe modality has been adopted as an engagement tool by the University of Florence science shop [13], which was born tanks to European Projects (InSPIRES) [14], in the spirit of the Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) principles [15]. During the lockdown, these association stopped their activity, and many programmed events were canceled. However, their reference community asked for both the possibility of discussing aspects related to the COVID-19 pandemics directly with experts and to continue the practice of science cafes in some online way. In the case of Rome, the main requests arrived from experts, who were dissatisfied by the lack of specific and detailed information about the virus. In Florence, the public of the local science shop exported the Caffe-Scienza association to continue organizing such events. In both cases, the response was to switch to completely online events, exploiting the previous knowledge about streaming live science cafes. After the first events, some teachers of a high school asked for help in completing a series of conferences about blood donation, interrupted by the lockdown. In the following, we report about this experience (which has also been partially replicated in Alessandria).