Capacity

It’s not a great feeling, turning 5,700 students away. Their teachers, 60 of them, wanted to take part in I’m a Scientist and I’m an Engineer this November but there wasn’t the funding to accommodate them. Sadly, it’s not the first time.

Demand has exceeded funded places available for the past 13 events; and in 9 of those we could have run double the number of zones we did.

Double the number of young people seeing that scientists and engineers are normal people like themselves.

Double the number of scientists and engineers taking part in “the best crash course in science communication”.

The Wellcome Trust, the British Psychological Society, and the UK Space Agency are among the funders this November. If you are interested in getting more chemists, non-biomed scientists or engineers in your field involved in outreach, if you think more students should get the opportunity to find out what science and scientists are like then please write to someone with an outreach or widening participation budget and ask them to consider working with us. Continue reading →

We’ve just let down about 8,000 students. Their teachers, 84 of them, wanted to take part in I’m a Scientist this June and we simply don’t have room for them. We need more funding. The graph shows the number of class places requested by teachers (box outline), against the funded places we were able to run (colour-fill) for each event. Demand has consistently exceeded places available for the past 9 events; indeed for the past 6 events, we could have run double the number of zones we did. Double the number of young people seeing that scientists are normal people like themselves. Double the number of scientists taking part in “the best crash course in science communication”. The Wellcome Trust and the British Psychological Society are funding zones this June. If you are interested in getting more physicists, chemists, non-biomed scientists involved in outreach, if you think more students should get the opportunity to … Continue reading →

This afternoon we apologised to 47 schools, telling teachers that we have not been able to offer their students a place in I’m a Scientist this March. The graph shows the number of class places requested by teachers (box outline), against the funded places we were able to run (colour-fill) for each event. Demand has consistently exceeded places available for the past 8 events; indeed for the past 5 events, we could have run double the number of zones we did. Double the number of young people becoming more enthused about science. Double the number of scientists taking part in “the best crash course in science communication”. Our limiting factor is funding. We need more funding to run more zones and increase the capacity of the events. Unfortunately the Royal Society of Chemistry has withdrawn their funding planned for this year and the STFC funding we had has not been renewed, meaning spaces for chemistry and … Continue reading →