National Science Month 2026: Listening to the sky, telling our own stories

At a community-supported radio telescope outside Hammanskraal, a four-day National Science Month workshop brought African Indigenous Knowledge, contemporary astronomy and storytelling into the same conversation.

The 24-element Transient Array Radio Telescope at Kwalata Game Lodge provides an accessible platform for introducing communities, educators and field guides to radio astronomy.

On the edge of the Dinokeng Game Reserve, just outside Hammanskraal, a ring of small antennas sits quietly listening to the radio sky. For four days in July, the telescope gave a group of educators, field guides and community members something more: new stories to tell and new ways of telling them.

From 21 to 24 July 2026, NRF|SARAO, NRF|SAASTA and Rhodes University’s Centre for Radio Astronomy Techniques and Technologies (RATT) presented a science communication and astro-tourism training programme at Kwalata Game Lodge.

The programme formed part of National Science Month and a longer-term community development initiative supported by SARAO and the Kwalata Community Development Initiative. It brought together participants from Hammanskraal and field guides from the Dinokeng Game Reserve to explore how astronomy, local knowledge, tourism and education can reinforce one another.

A telescope rooted in its community

The scientific anchor for the training was the Transient Array Radio Telescope, better known as TART.

TART is a compact, low-cost and open-source radio interferometer. Its 24 antenna elements work together to produce an image of the radio sky, using principles similar to those employed by much larger instruments such as MeerKAT and the Square Kilometre Array.

The telescope provides an accessible way of introducing people to radio astronomy and showing how individual antennas can operate together as a single scientific instrument. Its location at Kwalata also creates opportunities to connect astronomy with education, conservation, tourism and community development.

Distinguished Professor Oleg Smirnov, who holds the SARAO Research Chair in Radio Astronomy Techniques and Technologies at Rhodes University, led the technical component together with doctoral students from RATT. They introduced participants to astronomy, radio interferometry and the operation of the TART telescope.

Participants learned how radio telescopes detect signals that cannot be seen by the human eye, how the 24 antennas work together and how the resulting data can be used to build an image of the sky.

Making astronomy EPIC

Dr Anton Binneman of NRF|SAASTA led the science communication component using the EPIC astro-tourism engagement model, developed through earlier work with astro-guides in the Karoo.

EPIC stands for experiential, participatory, image-rich and connective. Rather than presenting science as a one-way transfer of information, the model encourages storytellers to create experiences in which audiences can participate, ask questions and connect scientific ideas to familiar places and knowledge.

Participants explored how to:

• begin with an experience, such as the darkness, sounds and scale of the night sky;
• make communication participatory by inviting questions and contributions from the audience;
• use image-rich stories and metaphors to make difficult astronomical concepts easier to imagine; and
• create connections between people, the cosmos, scientific knowledge, culture and landscape.

The model moves from capacity development to the integration of scientific and local knowledge, and finally to an immersive form of science engagement.

Different ways of understanding the same sky

African Indigenous Knowledge was central to the workshop.

Participants worked with stories of the sky found within their families, languages and communities. These stories were not treated as colourful additions to an astronomy presentation, but as knowledge connected to particular histories, identities and custodians.

The aim was not to use contemporary astronomy to validate Indigenous Knowledge, or to replace one system of knowledge with another. Instead, the workshop explored how the two could be brought into respectful conversation.

A story about the Milky Way, the Moon or the movement of the stars can become an entry point into a discussion of galaxies, planetary motion or the scale of the Universe. At the same time, the scientific explanation does not remove the cultural meaning carried by the original story.

This approach changes the role of the field guide, educator or community storyteller. Rather than reciting a prepared astronomy script, they become mediators between different ways of understanding the same sky.

The underlying astro-tourism model similarly positions locally trained guides as an interpretive bridge between astronomy, cultural knowledge and visitor experience.

Educators, community members and Dinokeng field guides explore how African stories of the sky can be brought into conversation with contemporary astronomy. 

From hosting science to interpreting it

The Hammanskraal training drew on lessons from the Carnarvon Astro Guides initiative in the Karoo. There, locally trained guides help visitors understand the astronomy landscape surrounding MeerKAT and the SKA by connecting scientific infrastructure with the history, culture and lived experience of the region.

The approach is described in the forthcoming Nature Astronomy Comment, Astro-tourism as a model for participatory science engagement. The article argues that scientific infrastructure acquires greater local meaning when surrounding communities can participate in it, interpret it and derive social, cultural or economic value from its presence.

At Hammanskraal, this idea became practical.

For a Dinokeng field guide, the training could support the development of a night-sky experience linked to an existing nature or wildlife offering. For an educator, it could provide a new way to introduce astronomy using stories learners already recognise. For community members, it demonstrated that local knowledge belongs within science engagement and can help shape how science is understood.

Over four days, participants did more than learn how a radio telescope listens to the Universe. They began developing the confidence and skills to become storytellers of the sky, connecting contemporary astronomy with the knowledge, landscapes and stories of the communities beneath it.