Peterborough STEM Festival
A one-day, free to attend STEM festival to engage, inspire, and develop young people – especially girls – into becoming tomorrow’s Science, Technology, Engineering, and Maths innovators
Who is behind the event?
Peterborough STEM festival was conceived by the organisers of Digital People in Peterborough (DPiP), a nonprofit community group working to enable collaborative knowledge sharing and engagement through digital technology. The festival was inspired by Ada Lovelace Day (ALD). This international day of celebration helps people learn about the achievements of women in STEM, inspiring others and creating new role models for young and old alike. Events are held worldwide.
Why have a STEM festival?
Cambridge Science Festival runs for two weeks during March and each year, the festival welcomes visitors to hundreds of events and receives extensive national and local media coverage. Over 170 event coordinators organise talks, interactive demonstrations, hands-on activities, film showings and debates. In South Lincolnshire, inspired by the genius of Sir Isaac Newton, Gravity Fields is a five-day festival with audiences of around 60,000 for outdoor events, shows and exhibitions over the five days – with 15,000 for Saturday’s transformation of the Grantham alone. Peterborough has officially been declared a Gigabit City with access to some of the fastest internet connectivity in the world. As a Gigabit City, Peterborough has a significant competitive advantage over other areas and can lead the way with an innovative digital and technological advances. A festival encourages visitors to explore STEM by bringing out the natural curiosity and passion for learning that is shared by all.
Who is the STEM festival for?
The festival is designed for school aged children, students in higher education (especially girls), parents, educators, communicators and anyone with an interest in STEM. ● Over 500* visitors who live in and around Peterborough are anticipated on the main event day. ● The festival will allow attendees to engage in STEM learning in a playful, interesting festival context. ● The festival will put young girls, children, and adults in direct contact with women STEM experts to make the applied nature of these disciplines more relatable. ● The festival will place STEM learning in a context that is relevant to the use in our daily lives as consumers, professionals and citizens, compelling visitors to understand the significance of STEM skills now and in the future. *Numbers based on indoor-only event.
Contact:
Tia Lush @whoatemycrayons
Andy Reedman @andyreedman
Jonathan Frascella @joffff
E:
For FREE tickets, please visit peterboroughstemfestival.co.uk
Organised in partnership with
● The community and schools – via Peterborough City Council ● Schools/Students/Teachers – via Skills Service (careers) ● Higher education and graduates – via University Centre Peterborough ● Business network – via Opportunity Peterborough ● Peterborough’s leisure and culture division – via Vivacity ● The digital community – via DPiP
Main workshops
STEMettes
Half day workshop hosted by STEMettes – non profit organisation
Meet the Panel – short informal talks ‘journey into STEM’ geared towards students and children. 5-7 women role models and 1 mystery man!
Competitions – engaging participants with interactive tasks and challenges. Age specific competitions and prizes.
Networking – all participants have an opportunity to meet and chat with each other and the panel of experts.
Makeathon
The remit is to: learn new things, build cool stuff, and meet other developers! Cross-functional. This is not just for the IT crowd. Open to all ages, it brings together people from across all disciplines to encourage different ways of working a problem. Participants will include coders, designers, musicians and storytellers. Working on broad STEM themes and topics it will ask participants to solve a problem or challenge with an STEM/sustainability twist.
Coding and Hacks
Teaching children how to harness the power of technology by understanding how it works from the inside with HackLab HackLab is a creative learning environment where children aged 8-16 are encouraged to embrace their inner hacker; by stepping through the looking glass and taking charge of technology through open ended projects utilising industry leading technologies.
Key dates
Saturday 1 Oct Main festival event day at Allia Future Business Centre ● Wednesday 5 Oct Ada Lovelace Lecture at University Centre Peterborough DPiP Women in STEM Debate Evening with ALD Founder Suw Charman-Anderson ● Tuesday 11 October Ada Lovelace Day
MAIN FESTIVAL EVENT: Saturday 1 October 2016 at Allia Future Business Centre, Peterborough
Image: www.freepik.com/free-photo/pushing-the-play-button
