“It’s about an emotional connection to education. TV has to be entertaining, but for me, being able to connect emotionally with education is just as important as being able to connect intellectually.” Since MasterChef, Milbourne went on to create his own television show called Ben’s Menu, which was nominated for a 2015 Logie Award. Milbourne also runs a diverse business in Tasmania with his wife, Sally. Their business, the Cultivate Group, encompasses media productions and food tours on the north-west coast of Tasmania. They manage events such as food stages around the country, and develop food lines and private dining experiences at their farmhouse. He will also be opening a restaurant and production studio in October next year. Milbourne returned to UQ this year to begin filming for his new television program Ben Milbourne’s Food Lab. UQ has partnered with Cultivate Productions, part of the the Cultivate Group, for the development and production of the 13-episode series, which will air on Channel Ten in 2017. The series will use the format of a celebrity cooking show as a medium to help viewers understand and engage with science. Each episode will be based at a UQ campus and will focus on a science principle, with the series covering the full spectrum of chemical, biological, physical and earth sciences.
CELEBRATING EXCELLENCE Ben Milbourne has been recognised for his achievements and role as a community leader in 2016 with a Distinguished Young Alumni Award. See pages 32–39 to read about UQ’s 2016 Alumni Awards recipients.
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UQ CONTACT SUMMER 2016
“Ben Milbourne’s Food Lab has been a pet project that I’ve been slowly working on since 2012,” Milbourne said. “It marries the three things I absolutely love – cooking, science and education. Throughout my teaching career, I used food as a way to explain day-to-day occurrences in science. I always found that students were more open to learning if I connected it to things they would do in their normal lives.
“Science has become sexy and food shows have obviously been some of the highest-rating programs in Australia over the last eight years. There is definitely a market to be able to educate people through food and use that as a vehicle for wider education around science. “We’ll be filming on the campus grounds, filming with scientists and members of the UQ community. We’ll be telling stories about the science and research that’s happening at UQ, we’ll be telling stories about university life, and we’ll be telling my story, about how I got to where I am and the role the University played. “It’s about an emotional connection to education. TV has to be entertaining, but for me, being able to connect emotionally with education is just as important as being able to connect intellectually.” Milbourne believes there isn’t a problem that can’t be solved through a better educated public. “The reason we are on this planet is to move our communities and people forward, and I think that education is the only thing that’s able to do that in the right way,” Milbourne said. “Ben Milbourne’s Food Lab is designed around trying to create change in a positive way with the biggest possible audience we can. “As a teacher, you get a class of 25. Now I get an opportunity to speak to more than a million people a week and try to educate them in something I’m passionate about. “It just means that my classroom has become bigger, and that’s really how I look at it.”
UQ CONTACT SUMMER 2016
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