RAEng announces Ingenious public engagement projects
10/07/2017
The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced 17 projects that have been awarded funding under the Ingenious public engagement programme.
The projects, which include stage shows, hands-on workshops and online X Factor-style competitions for school children, are set to take place across the UK during 2017 and 2018 and will provide new opportunities for members of the public to meet professional engineers and learn about the exciting and creative work they undertake.
One project, as part of Glasgow Science Festival, brings together university engineers and theatre students to produce a live musical show to be performed for local secondary schools in disadvantaged areas, while another, as part of Birmingham City Engineering Week, will entertain the public with street performances.
Other community-based projects funded under the scheme will allow people to meet the engineers behind some of the most significant projects in their local areas, with residents of Thanet introduced to technicians from the world’s largest wind farm and young people in Bath given the opportunity to redesign their city and stage an exhibition of their vision at a local museum.
Hands-on projects funded this year will equip teachers to design new teaching tools, such as interactive apps, and provide new resources to challenge outdated views of the manufacturing industries. A collaboration between two Scottish universities will tour an interactive roadshow to introduce students and festival-goers to the challenges of different types of ‘sludge’, from custard to cement, for engineers in a range of industries.
‘A car for women and other stories: engineering via storytelling’, devised by the University of the West of Scotland, will see engineers, artists and creative practitioners working together to create a film based on the story of Dorothée Pullinger (1894-1986), pioneering automobile engineer, Director and Manager of Galloway Motors Ltd and a founding member of the Women’s Engineering Society. Public events will showcase the film in conjunction with a song-writing project and additional workshops.
Projects were selected to represent the diversity of the engineering profession in the UK, with particular consideration given to proposals to reach underserved audiences. A successful online forum for children to pose questions to engineers will be extended to those schools that will benefit from it the most, while a new science show is being specially developed to reach audiences who are deaf or hard of hearing.
The Ingenious scheme not only gives people an opportunity to explore some of the wide-ranging engineering challenges being tackled by researchers and UK industry, but it also specifically provides funding to train and equip engineers themselves to develop their communication skills. Resources developed as part of the scheme can continue to be used in future years to allow a whole new group of engineers to engage with the public.
Professor Mark Miodownik FREng, Chair of the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious panel, explained: “Creative engineering underpins so much of our everyday life, from the necessities of energy and transport to the stunning design of modern cities. Engineering is everywhere! The Royal Academy of Engineering is really excited to fund these projects and give people the opportunity to see the engineering that’s all around them, to explore it in new ways and to give engineers the opportunity to get out there and share the fantastic work they do.”
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