Since 2017, the UK Science Festivals Network (UKSFN), with funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has supported science festival practitioners to bring underserved audiences and researchers together.

To aid reflection amongst UKSFN members and the wider engagement sector, over the past two years, we have shared learnings from these projects in a series of blogs.

The sixth blog in our ‘UKSFN learning curves’ series is written by Irina Jarrett-Thorpe, director at Engineering Minds.

“GIRLS’ IMPACT ON ENGINEERING” – A pilot project

At Engineering Minds, we aim to help young people become the next generation of scientists and engineers by harnessing their knowledge and creativity – and have lots of Eureka moments along the way!

With support from UKRI and UKSFN, we were able to take our work in an entirely new direction by working with young people of secondary school age, and also developing new partnerships by engaging with external engineers and researchers.

This pilot project ‘Girls’ Impact on Engineering’ aimed to inspire interest in a career in engineering for 15 girls aged between 11-14 from underrepresented groups in Greenwich, London.

Being a new direction of work for us, naturally, we were all nervous at the start but by the end of it, there was an overwhelming enthusiasm across the board to run similar projects in the future. Let’s start from the beginning…

Behind the scenes

Girls’ Impact on Engineering ran from July to November 2021, with the first three months being allocated to planning sessions that would be delivered from October – November.

We started by partnering with local community groups that work with families from an ethnic minority background – Afyah organisation, The Greenwich Somali Community, and The Greenwich Turkish Community. Engaging with young people through these partnerships was one of the project’s strengths and key success factors, as it allowed us to better understand their needs, and supported them to trust our project.

We also engaged with two researchers and six engineers who volunteered from the very beginning of the project, taking part in preparatory meetings to explore the most suitable ways to engage with the young people.

The topics for each session chosen to reflect local engineering projects that the girls could relate to, as many didn’t feel that engineering impacted their lives directly. We based the sessions on delving into some of the challenges local communities in Greenwich are affected by and explored why gender balanced teams of engineers could be more effective in tackling them through more creative approaches. An important learned lesson was to help the girls explore topics that directly reflect their lives, engineering projects that they could directly relate to. Once the girls understood the impact of civil engineering projects on their own communities, they could relate to topics that directly affected their lives and their immediate environment. And so, we could see a significant increase in their interest in engineering and how it truly makes a difference to people’s lives.

The first session – cutting out the jargon

The first session ran in October, which aimed to introduce engineering and the role played by research in engineering.

One of the challenges we faced was bringing the context of engineering and research to girls who had no previous knowledge or experience of engineering, It became clear that we needed to avoid all technical jargon and stick to bitesize presentations of no more than 5 minutes.

We discussed topics from a local perspective and used numerous hands-on and interactive activities.

Fire simulations to LEGO cars

The next sessions covered what it’s like working as a fire engineer. The girls were shown a fire simulation in Blackwall Tunnel, one of the busiest tunnels in South-East London, and reflected on how fire risks could be minimised in tunnels and public buildings. The girls also conducted afire risk assessment for the community building we were identifying possible hazards and coming up with solutions for keeping everyone safe. The group then put what they learnt to the test with a hands on activity dedicated to building a LEGO tunnel that would comply with all the fire safety requirements.  The girls embraced this challenge with enthusiasm and built tunnels that had escape routes, fans to dissipate the smoke, alarms systems, adequate lighting and clear signing.

Other sessions included exploring the advantages and disadvantages of car-free areas and how electric cars work, how to create a High-Speed Rail from Greenwich, alongside the different routes into engineering and the opportunities in international engineering careers.

It was truly fascinating to see how seriously the girls took each challenge and how much thought and consideration they gave to each step of every project.

Next steps

The final evaluation of the project showed that out of 15 participants, 10 said they found the project very interesting and feel more connected with engineering and science. The enthusiasm and energy displayed by the girls showed us that they were really inspired by these eight sessions and we hope some of them will consider a career in engineering or research.

Following the success of this pilot project, Engineering Minds will aim to extend this model and engage with a few secondary schools from Greenwich, including Eltham Hill Secondary School for Girls, who has expressed a strong interest for bringing engineering opportunities to their students.

One of the challenges we expect to face is finding enthusiastic engineers and researchers who would have the time to visit the schools, work directly with the girls and come up with ideas for hands-on engineering activities that could become local projects.

The new curriculum “Girls’ Impact on Engineering” will continue to be used and improved to encourage teenage girls to explore a career in engineering and research.

Inspiring girls who might have never contemplated becoming engineers is not an easy task, but without any doubt is one of the most rewarding projects that our organisation has run so far.

If you are interested in science festivals, events or activities, join us for our upcoming UK Science Festivals Network Conference on 25 January 2022. This will be a great chance to meet others from the sector, such as some of the authors from the ‘UKSFN learning curves’ blog series, and delve into inspiring sessions tackling sustainability, coproduction, the rise of digital engagement, and more.

More in the ‘UKSFN learning curves’ series’: 

• UKSFN learning curves #1: How science festivals are innovating for young people in the COVID-19 era
• UKSFN learning curves #2: The Biophonia Project 
• UKSFN learning curves #3: How can we help?
• UKSFN learning curves #4: Developing a fluid and responsive project
• UKSFN learning curves #5: Exploring nature on a level playing field

Since 2017, the UK Science Festivals Network (UKSFN), with funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), has supported science festival practitioners to bring underserved audiences and researchers together.

To aid reflection amongst UKSFN members and the wider engagement sector, over the past two years, we have shared learnings from these projects in a series of blogs.

The fifth blog in our ‘UKSFN learning curves’ series is written by Ellie Turner-Wallace, Programmes Officer at The Natural History Consortium/Festival of Nature.

Exploring how to tackle ecological and climate emergencies, together

The Making Connections project has brought together local community groups and researchers to share their environmental expertise and personal stories of connecting with nature.

As the Making Connections Photography Exhibition opens in venues across Bristol, our team at the Natural History Consortium has been reflecting on our Making Connections Project in collaboration with the Black Seeds Network.

Over a series of workshops, designed to spark creative collaboration and challenging conversations, ten different voices came together to explore their various paths to working with nature – either in their professional, volunteering, or academic lives.

Half of the group were working in academic research, ranging in topics from bioengineering to waste management and photosynthesis to physiotherapy. The other half were community leaders involved in social projects built around connecting communities.

Inspired and informed by these discussions, the group shared their stories through photography as a visual medium, creating a photo exhibition that is now being showcased across the city, from local community centres to city centre museums.

One of the strengths of the project has been the close partnership and collaboration with the Black Seeds Network, from writing the original bid through to the evaluation process. The Network provides a platform for environmentalists of colour to socialise, gain support, seek opportunities, innovate and develop knowledge and expertise on environmental issues.

The partnership has been invaluable. It has enabled the project to work with community leaders through a trusted partner, and broker important conversations about inequality and exclusion.

An equal playing ground

One of the key discussions early on in the planning process asked how we could ensure that the community partners and researchers were entering the project on an equal footing, as experts in their respective fields.

Careful consideration was given to mitigate any perceived power imbalance during the workshops, supporting researchers to step out of their usual environment and appreciate the trust offered by communities welcoming them into their space.

The decision was made to hold the workshops in-person, in a space familiar to the community leaders. As a result, we were lucky enough to be invited into the spectacular home of the Bristol Rainforest at St Philips Nursery School. After much discussion, we were able to craft an invitation to researchers that attracted those with a keen interest in both learning from others and social justice. We found that this created a positive social dynamic within the group that allowed space for some difficult but important discussions.

An indoor rainforest always makes things better

It has been such a joy delivering in-person workshops, especially in the inspiring, relaxing setting of an indoor rainforest! Physically coming together enabled community leaders and researchers to get the opportunity to share their stories and expertise, learn together, and get to know one another.

However, holding the workshops in person has not been without its challenges! Fixing suitable dates for busy community leaders and researchers was difficult at times, and led to a workshop being postponed. To enable involvement in the project, particularly for those who were ill or isolating, we created opportunities for participants to join remotely and add their photographs into the final photography exhibition.

The primary output of the project was a Making Connections photography exhibition. Participants were encouraged to share their stories and experiences with a wider audience through photography. We have been astounded by the quality of the photographs!

We’ve been delighted by the response from organisations expressing an interest in hosting the exhibition. Our two-week planned tour has evolved into a month-long exhibition showcased by three partner organisations across multiple venues. By offering a digital version, we have been able to show the exhibition in even more venues across the city (without spending the entire project budget on printing costs!).

You can see some of the photography featured in the exhibition below:

Credit: Amrish Pandya	Credit: Hilary McCarthy
Credit: Huan Doan	Credit: Judit Davies
Credit: Gulid Mohamed	Credit: Olivia Reddy

To find out more about the Making Connections Exhibition and the organisations involved, visit: https://www.bnhc.org.uk/making-connections-photography-exhibition/

More in the ‘UKSFN learning curves’ series’: 

• UKSFN learning curves: how science festivals are innovating for young people in the COVID-19 era
• UKSFN learning curves #2: The Biophonia Project 
• UKSFN learning curves #3: How can we help?
• UKSFN learning curves #4: Developing a fluid and responsive project

Since 2017, the UK Science Festivals Network (UKSFN), with funding from UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) has supported science festival practitioners to bring underserved audiences together with researchers.

Last year, the COVID-19 pandemic meant science festival organisers had to completely re-think their approaches. This resulted in a diverse mix of projects from digital game development to virtual dance workshops and other (government-guideline friendly) activities. To aid reflection amongst UKSFN members and the wider engagement sector, we shared the learnings from these projects in a series of blogs:

• UKSFN learning curves: how science festivals are innovating for young people in the COVID-19 era
• UKSFN learning curves #2: The Biophonia Project 
• UKSFN learning curves #3: How can we help?

With lockdown restrictions lifted and a transition to a new ‘normal’ underway, for this year’s round of UKRI funding we aim to our support UKSFN members to focus on making connections; bringing underserved audiences together with researchers through community partnerships – with a mixture of digital, hybrid and in-person projects.

The fourth blog in our ‘UKSFN learning curves’ series is written by Lucy Cheesman, Project Manager at AlgoMech Festival.

Combining flamenco dance, weaving and live-coded music

In 2019, the AlgoMech Festival received funding from UKSFN to deliver drop-in live-coding music and visuals workshops as part of the Rotherham Show Diversity Festival.

This year, we are working with Roma community groups in Sheffield to deliver a series of workshops for young people, exploring algorithmic patterns through flamenco dancing, weaving and live-coded music.

We want the young people participating to influence the structure of the workshops and take the techniques in their own direction. To achieve this, I’ve collaborated with two researchers, Alex McLean and Rosemary Cisneros, to come up with new ways of working together to support the development of flexible, yet engaging and coherent workshops.

The difficulty in maintaining a fluid approach is balancing that flexibility with coherency across our disciplines, so we don’t end up working on flamenco dance, weaving and live-coded music in isolation!

Meeting for the first time

Alex, Rosa and I got together in person for the time ever last week to think through our approach. For all of us, there was a little awkwardness determining comfort levels working in the same space. It’s been such a long time since collaborating in real-life space – it took a bit of getting used to. Having said that, it was fantastic to feel that energy, and I’m so excited to be working with Rosa and Alex on this project.

We met in a large and beautiful meeting space attached to Alex’s lab at Abbeydale Picture House in Sheffield. Our aim for the session was to bring together our three disciplines and find a way to share ideas about rhythms and patterns that are common across the three art forms. We wanted everything to make sense to the young people, while avoiding being too prescriptive with how we structure the workshop. It’s important to all of us to respect the agency and intentions of the young people we work with, and allow them to guide and shape the work we do.

We spent our time looking at areas of commonality, focusing on tempo, rhythm, sound and pattern. We decided to use a common tempo to create cohesion between our activities. We are aiming to keep the overall sound of the workshop very simple -the sounds of clapping, movement of the body, and the sounds of the loom. All of which will be re-sampled and used as part of the music workshops. And of course, there will be the sounds of our voices in the space. We expect there will be a lot of energy in the room and things will get noisy, so we’re trying to think of ways to incorporate that into our workshop design… however, it’s impossible to predict how that feels until we’re in the room on the day!

We also wanted to come up with some activities for people who might feel intimidated or overwhelmed – setting up a corner with videos, worksheets and artefacts to explore in peace or with headphones on for those who need a bit of time out.

Just the beginning

For a final addition to the plan, we’re hoping our partners at Greentop Circus will be able to incorporate juggling patterns into the workshop using the same notation system and structure, touching on skills already familiar to the participants.

In all, it feels really exciting to be making progress on such a varied project, working in new ways and really thinking through how best to engage the young people in what we’re doing. I’m really looking forward to seeing what direction the participants take the skills in and what we can learn from them in return.

Read the next blog in the ‘UKSFN learning curves’ series:
UKSFN Learning curves #5: Exploring nature on a level playing field

By Emma Slater, Public Engagement Producer, Imperial College London

It’s the beginning of February 2021 and I’ve just hit ‘leave meeting’. I’m making the face I make when something I’ve just been a part of feels so meaningful that I might burst. We’ve just finished our first workshop with 10 of the most vulnerable young people in our local community. One young person, who has chatted with a researcher for 45 minutes says “I think about things like this all the time, but don’t have anyone to talk to about them with”. Heart full – it’s all worth it.

Rewind to December 2020 and we’ve just changed, replanned and postponed our ‘UKRI/UKSFN: Bringing young people and researchers together’ project for about the third time. The events of the past year have exhausted our community partner who is trying to make sure his young people have enough food to eat. He’s worried about the rise in the number of mental health-related issues he’s seeing in his group.

Rewind even further. It’s the Summer of 2020 and we’re about to get our planned series of music-based workshops rolling. Over a series of sessions, we’ll be exploring ‘futures’ with young people, Imperial College London researchers and rapper, Consensus. We’re excited about this creative melting pot and celebrating what had been created with everyone involved at the end.

Sadly, our music project didn’t happen in the way we had planned over the autumn. Our main challenge was an (understandable) reluctance from young people for online participation in any format, which worsened over time. Our community partner reported that their group felt self-conscious and fed up.

We caught up with our community partner on the phone regularly, just to chat about this and that. Aside from finding it really useful to understand how youth clubs work and their challenges, I wanted them to understand that we really cared, and that we’d still want to chat even if we weren’t actively running a project.

It was in one of these chats that they mentioned an art session they’d recently run for some of their most vulnerable young people. This was a version of a young person led, entrepreneurial project we’d talked about a while before: young people working with local artists, to design, customise and then re-sell trainers. The project was being cut for financial reasons, but they wanted to continue it to help those struggling with their mental wellbeing.

Our aim was always for our commitment to these young people to be long term, and it was important that we were there to help when it was needed. Together we came up with a way to run the project and remotely include Imperial researchers in these COVID-secure, in-person workshops. Now, throughout February, Imperial researchers will be chatting with the group about science, inspiring the creation of trainers customised with their work and conversations in mind. We’re only one session in, and I’m sure there will be unexpected challenges and things we might need to change, but I’m still really proud that we’ve managed to get this off the ground.

I’m really grateful for the British Science Association’s support throughout this fairly dramatic (and last minute!) pivot in another direction. As a result, 20-30 of the most vulnerable young people in our community are joining us for conversations and creativity with researchers, and our community partners are better able to support their user’s mental health.

So, back to the end of that first session I mentioned at the start. That ‘heart full’ moment was an accumulation of important reminders: how important it is to work with underrepresented and underserved young people, how resilient and joyful our community is, how essential it is to take the time and have a chat, and for me personally, why I do this job.

In the second of her reflections as our (outgoing) Head of Engagement, Ivvet Abdullah-Modinou highlights the incredible progress made as a result of the partnerships between community groups and the British Science Association. Using science as a tool to engage, stimulate and encourage people across the UK is at the core of the BSA’s purpose, mission and values. Here, she writes of just some of the projects that have been part of her journey.

This week I will be leaving the BSA and, as is to be expected, I have been doing some reflecting on the things I am most proud of. Having written about the UK Science Festivals Network, I now turn my attention to our community engagement portfolio, which the Engagement team has had the pleasure of building and leading over the last six years.

How it came about

What began as a pilot to enable more people to run events in British Science Week has grown into a programme of work that now supports hundreds of community groups each year, and underpins our approach to community partnerships. Since 2015, we have given out over 800 microgrants to community groups, supported by UK Research and Innovation.

The heart of our approach is “getting out of the way” and letting communities decide how best to structure, develop, and execute their engagement with science. We provide support, signposting and access to our networks if they want it, but we believe that people, who may also have no formal science background, can and should be in the driving seat.

This work also made us look at ourselves, as an organisation, differently. If this approach was to succeed, we had to start handing over control to communities, whether around content, brand or voice. Any organisation that wants to follow this example will need to accept that this is part of the process.

Implementing the community-first approach

I’m not going to pretend it was easy, it was tough at the start; these communities didn’t know us, and we hadn’t earnt their trust yet. How many organisations have helicoptered into their communities with promises only to leave after the project is over? Back at the start, a lot of our conversations were around breaking down the stereotypes around science and showing local people we were ultimately interested in supporting their long-term ambitions for their community, rather than them producing a one-off event for our benefit. But as the old saying goes, “don’t tell me, show me”. This work took time and it was well worth it; here are some great case studies highlighting some of the fantastic work from the communities we have had the pleasure of working with along the way.

The next question for our community engagement work was, how do we go beyond a transactional relationship? Sure, giving out grants is nice, but could we be doing more? Our community grant recipients led us to create our Community Leaders programme and we were lucky enough to work with some brilliant and inspiring people. If you’d like to connect with your local community partners, the Community Leaders programme page includes a list of superstars who have taught me so much over the years.

Earlier this year we partnered with the Local Trust. We listened to community groups in Boston, Lincolnshire – an area of the UK we had identified as one with little traditional science engagement provision – asking what we could do to support science engagement in their town. They said the biggest barrier was language, so we created British Science Week activity packs in Polish and Russian.

Listening to our communities further, we noticed there was some hesitancy around contacting researchers directly. The most memorable bit of feedback I heard was, “they are solving cancer, why would they want to come and speak to us?” Considering such comments, we rebuilt Science Live to begin to help broker those connections on a local level.

Finding a scientist online is all well and good, but how do we create lasting human relationships between researchers and communities? So was born our Community Buddies scheme and, working with Froi Legaspi from Citizens UK, we were able to borrow community organising tools to help. This programme is a work in progress but I’m a big believer of showing the working out. Watch this space.

We also wanted to begin to address power imbalances in science engagement; could we create a new format to help people solve real-world problems in their communities using research skills? Working in partnership with FoAM Kernow, we created AccessLab – from a kernel of an idea, through to an academic paper.

Applying “community-first” to existing BSA work

We were eager to embed this community engagement approach in some of our other programmes, so we launched the British Science Festival Community Grants which allowed us to work more closely with communities in the Festival’s host city. This enabled us to meet some truly talented people, and also allowed them to feel part of the Festival on their own terms. For example, Christine Eade who shared her contacts with us so generously in Coventry and opened up new partnerships in the city, through to the team at The Warren in Hull who are doing brilliant work with young people and who we were lucky enough to partner with.

And what about COVID-19? When the pandemic struck, a lot of the communities we work with switched to frontline services. Some turned themselves into food banks, some were supporting migrant parents who had to become teachers overnight, and some were rallying together to provide social contact for the lonely. We listened, and tried to respond, without jumping to a solution straight away. During the early days of the pandemic, I would regularly ask myself, “are we just trying to carry on doing our job, or are we actually trying to help?” This allowed us to stay honest and on course with supporting communities in the ways they needed. We rolled out a series of Community Innovation Grants to support through this time and here are a series of blogs about the stellar achievements from communities around the UK.

I have spent a lot of my time at the BSA travelling around the UK and meeting different communities, which I have loved. From Penzance to Orkney, and Belfast to Eastbourne, there are incredible people doing the hard work to bring about real change. Of course, they are not always driven by the science content; they care about their communities and they go to work every day to tackle a host of challenges like social isolation, improving literacy or just to give young people something to do. But they have taught me that science engagement can have a role to play, if done in true partnership.

If you represent a community-based group or organisation that works directly with audiences who are traditionally underrepresented in science, please do join our Community Engagement Network.