“After those nine days, my life changed.”

BarcelonaPol Landman Brignoni, mathematician and co-director of Explorium, could not have imagined that in the summer of 2019, after participating in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament on Lake Como in northern Italy and hitchhiking back to Lyon, his life would take a turn for the worse. He had spent weeks desperately searching for internships for his mathematics degree, but everything he was offered—major banks or the largest meat distributor in Europe—didn't interest him in the least: "I was looking for something related to the world of education." While he was working as a tutor, someone suggested he ask Explorium, the science leisure association, run at the time by Laura Morera, who had been his teacher at school. He wrote to her, and she immediately suggested they run a math summer camp in September.

"I had done a lot of tutoring, but I had never felt so good. I fell in love with the project," he admits. He found the experience incredible; he loved everything about it, especially the way the passion for mathematics was transmitted to children who found a space where they could indulge their interests in a way they couldn't anywhere else. It was nine intense days, with four consecutive shifts with children and young adults. "After those nine days, my life changed," he says with satisfaction. It also changed his perspective on mathematics. He had one year left to finish his degree, and from then on, he saw everything he did in class as an opportunity to turn it into a recreational activity.

In those camps, as in all the ones he's done since, he would get up at 8 a.m. to wake everyone up with all the energy in the world and spend the day doing activities with a mathematical perspective. He assures us that in these camps you can find things you don't find anywhere else. He particularly remembers one of the first nights, when he went to check whether the children were asleep or not: "The room was quiet, but I could see the light from a flashlight. I went over and between the beds there were three children with a sheet of paper, they were solving a math problem."

He still works as a monitor. The monitors participate in the creation of the camps, inventing everything from the guiding thread to the activities that will be carried out. He says it's gratifying to test what they've invented and see that it works. He adds that all the effort they put into it generates a very strong team spirit, thanks to which they enjoy living together with the rest of the team: "It's a very fun job, demanding and at the same time rewarding, because magical things happen."