Engineering Festival 2011

Introduction

We're planning a big outreach event, the Engineering Festival, which will take place on 18th October 2011, at the Imperial War Museum in Duxford. Such outreach is very important for the Makespace community, as helping engage and inspire young people is a big part of the reason we think Makespace is necessary, and hopefully it will help us reach our engagement targets set as a requirement for receiving our bootstrap funding.

This will be a day for secondary school pupils aged 15+ to have a go at some hands-on, problem-solving engineering work, and also learn more about the engineering industry. Ideally the day will include a range of quality interactive engineering activities - very hands-on - as well as talks and demos. The event is being organised in collaboration with STEM TEAM and Duxford, and aims to attract at least 400 students from across the region, who are studying science/engineering/design&technology at BTEC, GCSE or A level.

We need your help, now, in planning and designing workshops, and on the day!

For the event to be a success, it would be great if you could offer any or all of the following things. Please add your ideas to the Meetup page, or drop us a line at info@makespace.org if you think you can help with any of these, so that the organisers have time to pull together the plan and get schools and companies on board.

• ideas for hands-on activities which could work within a day (~6 hours maximum) or a shorter session, with this age group. This could be from any type of engineering - we'd really like to have a wide range
• suggestions of potential sponsoring companies (most useful if you can provide a relevant contact at the organisation) - any level of sponsorship is welcome, in cash or in kind
• offers of talks (any duration!) which would interest the students
• suggestions for celebrity speakers or exciting topics where a speaker could be found, which could provide a high profile "keynote" element to the day
• volunteers to test out the ideas for hands-on activities (this testing will probably take place in late March or early April - all welcome! We'll need to figure out what can be done with what equipment, how long a task might take a 15-17 year old, etc)
• offers of demos from companies, which could be given at a stand in a "trade show" type area
• volunteers to help out on 18th October itself (briefing and support will be given in advance through the STEM TEAM network; existing STEM Ambassadors will probably hear about this event separately, too, in which case volunteering through STEM TEAM is fine and you don't need to contact Makespace as well)
• contact with teachers and schools in the East of England that would be interested in attending.

Activity ideas Please add ideas below. We will discuss during early April and then tidy up this list into a feasible set.