Public Engagement Grant Scheme-funded projects 2023

Herschel Museum of Astronomy

Project: Starseekers – Beyond the Museum Walls

This project will enable the creation of a new partnership between the Herschel Museum of Astronomy, Bath Astronomers, and the University of Bath Observatory.

Working with families from disadvantaged backgrounds who access support services at the Percy Community Centre, as well as young people who attend the Black Families Education Support Group, we will bring new audiences to the fields of science and astronomy.

Working with these established community groups and networks ensures we can connect with our target audiences and enable them to access astronomy and planetarium experiences in the museum, local centre and libraries as well as linking with the professional team at the observatory. We will work with the families and young people to codevelop the outcomes of this project, encouraging them to curate their own experiences and define the project outcomes.

This in-depth programme will enable us to connect with these audiences and build a programme that we aim to sustain beyond the life of this project.

ARC and You

Project: The Physics in Climate Change

The Physics in Climate Change project from ARC and You will be used to organise an awareness campaign for 600 residents of the Royal Borough of Greenwich, especially people from Black and ethnic minorities.

The project is designed to take place over three months, with two-hour weekly sensitisation events at the community libraries and a twice-monthly exhibition and forum at public halls and community centres on the relevance of physics to climate change and how physics could be applicable to climate actions toward correcting the great issue we have regarding global warming and the risks of fossil fuel as a means of heat-trapping greenhouse gas levels in Earth’s atmosphere.

This programme will foster awareness of the physics behind climate change and educate on the understanding of how integral physics is in determining the consequences of climate change over our world.

BME (Black and Minority Ethnic) Housing Consortium

Project: “Looking for Some Hot Stuff…”

It explains the physics of staying warm in the current energy and cost of living crisis.

The audience is individuals and groups not currently engaged in any physics activities, or opportunities to learn physics, or who want to learn new physics:

• young people especially, whole family groups, people and organisations that can influence young people, e.g. parents, carers, community groups, support workers etc.; and
• BME communities, girls, women, people with mental ill-health, those with learning disabilities, neurodivergent individuals, refugees, migrant communities, the LGBTQ+ community, independent adults, and the general public.

Audiences will learn about:

• the effects of cold on the body;
• heat (thermal) energy and heat transfer through conduction, convection and radiation;
• thermodynamics and insulation; and
• material sciences and heat technologies.

Activities:

• 15 workshops;
• 120 activity packs; and
• creative making and learning – audiences codesigning and coproducing theoretical and practical examples of minimising heat loss in clothing, homes, buildings.

Muslim Women’s Council

Project: Our Deen is Green – Paths to Physics

We will take groups of families on local trail walks to introduce to them and help them better understand the connection between everyday life, the environment, and physics.

We will be working with only the female members of Muslim families living in and around Bradford; these include mothers, daughters, and sisters. We will take groups of up to 30 women and girls per walk and do five walks over a four-month period from July 2023 to October 2023.

Each walk will start with a planning meeting and have a walk leader and physics specialist, both women. Walking provides a perfect backdrop to help participants understand environment and climate, energy, time and travel, conservation of energy, stability and walking, and traction and descent.

By experiencing physics through practical everyday activity, we hope that Muslim women and girls will be encouraged to explore physics more and maybe pursue it in education and employment.

University of York

Project: Safe Space: Multisensory Resources for Disabled Children

This project will develop and deliver multisensory workshops on space science and astronomy for disabled children in special schools, working in collaboration with children’s STEM charity, the Lightyear Foundation.

Workshops will use virtual reality headsets and bespoke soundscapes, in conjunction with tactile materials and astronaut foods to offer these children the chance to immerse themselves within the night sky and explore other worlds from the safety of a familiar environment – their school – without needing to take costly and logistically challenging trips to science centres or planetariums.

The Lightyear Foundation Impact Report 2020-21 states: “For children with more-complex disabilities, science offers a unique way to inspire and impart key life skills such as choice making or dealing with unexpected outcomes. Themes such as space and alien worlds have high appeal, particularly for harder to reach groups such as boys with challenging behaviour.”

Barnet Libraries – London Borough of Barnet

Project: First Physics

Our project involves a series of early years physics events for children in the most deprived areas of the London Borough of Barnet.

We will invite families and nursery/preschool groups to come to the library for a ‘First Physics’ session. The sessions will involve a story and play activities designed to introduce children to physics basics, such as the concepts of sinking and floating, gravitational forces, magnetism, magnification, light and dark, and space.

We have a specialist early years team who can deliver the sessions, by researching the subject of physics in the early years. This would include information on the IOP website. Our target audience is both the children living in these deprived areas and their parents/carers, many of whom will be women.

The two wards we will target also have the highest number of residents describing their ethnic origin as Black African in the London Borough of Barnet.

Fair Futures

Project: Windmills and Marble Runs

We will deliver three four-hour sessions during the October half-term, where children and young people will build windmills capable of lifting marbles to be used on a marble run. They will investigate what makes the most effective blades for the windmills and also construct the marble run.

The children will come from a range of migrant backgrounds. They will discuss the conservation of energy, kinetic energy, gravitational potential energy and consider the advantages and drawbacks of wind power.

We will produce multilingual prompt cards so that the children can use both English and their first language. These will be uploaded and shared to our website. At the end of the week we will hold a celebration event where all the models will be displayed.

Families and friends will be encouraged to come along and the young people will have the opportunity to explain the physics they have learnt.