Spring 2011 Newsletter

Have a look below to see what Ignition* has planned for 2011.

Creative Sparks

We are looking forward to the Creative Sparks residential at the end of February. Eight of our Creative Sparks, plus their mentors, will spend a weekend exploring their creative ideas, learning new skills, and developing as individuals. We have some fantastic practitioners on board and a great venue at Barnsdale Hall Hotel, Rutland. The team are really excited about this weekend, and can’t wait to get the creative ideas flowing!

Come Alive with Science

Come Alive with Science (CAWS) is almost upon us, and with the additional fourteen schools joining the existing fifteen already on board, it looks set to be a great National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW)! Held from the 11th-20th March, this year’s NSEW theme is Communication, and many schools have built this into their CAWS activity plans. We are really excited to see what crazy science will be on display this year, and will of course have a full update following NSEW of all the activities that went on across the East Midlands.

Sci-art fusions

Four Sci-art Fusions commissions are currently being developed with artists and schools and the preparations are underway. Many of the events will take place during National Science and Engineering Week (NSEW), 11th-20th March.

One of the projects will be the collaboration of a young undergraduate physics science communicator to work as a STEM practitioner, with artists to deliver workshops to schools on Lincolnshire coast about the camera obscura built into an excavated pillbox.

The second project will work with young people who have profound and multiple learning difficulties, in Leicestershire, working with artists and scientists to communicate a story and musical piece using new technologies.

The third project will work with young people in small groups, ‘looking at things differently’. Young people, schools, and family groups will take inspiration from a walk to the waters edge at Idle Valley (Retford), do some pond-dipping, look at shapes and surface textures (with the help of a shadow puppet performance and print-making), and then studying everything at an even more detailed scale, under the microscope: all with the guidance of artists and scientists.

The final Sci-art fusions commission will work with primary schools local to Vicar Water (Mansfield) where young people and the community will learn about habitats, nest construction and seed dispersal. Practitioners (a paper engineer and artist) will work alongside local rangers on site to provide inspiration for an interactive book based on biodiversity and nature.

We are hopeful that some of this will also feed into the Nottingham Science Festival evening activities for families and community groups.

Lab 13

Our three new Lab_13s are busy making arrangements for hiring their STEM persons-in-residence, just as Dovecote, our original Lab 13, has hired Dr. Bryson Gore from OmniScience, who has previously worked at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. He will be working two days a week at Dovecote Primary School. Information on upcoming vacancies for our new Lab 13s will be posted on the Ignition* website, under ‘Vacancies’.

Peele and Crown Hills Lab 13’s are busy making plans for their first birthday celebrations! And what a first year it has been, with Crown Hills Lab 13 visiting Genoa, and now hoping to collaborate with a rural school near Genoa.

For further information on any of our programmes, please click here.