Projects

Reading Sparks is a project led by The Reading Agency.  The project will harness the proven power of reading to engage families with STEM, and bridge the gap in science capital for families from lower socio-economic groups, teenage girls and BME communities.  There are 11 library services across England involved in the project: Barnsley, Coventry, Derbyshire, Halton, Hillingdon, Hull, Newham, Portsmouth, Suffolk, Swindon, and Torbay.

NUSTEM is working with The Reading Agency to develop activities for loan bags that the libraries will share with their visitors and supporting the work with young people. We are also involved in the governance and evaluation of the project.

NUSTEM Team: Joe Shimwell, Jonathan Sanderson, Carol Davenport

External partners: The Reading Agency, British Science Association

Funders: Arts Council England, Science and Technology Facilities Council

Professor Trevor Cox, from Salford University, is creating a podcast series – Inventive – which tells the stories of engineering.  Using a fascinating mix of interviews with a diverse range of engineers, and fiction based on those interviews Inventive blends different voices together to create a new way of looking at engineers and engineering.

NUSTEM is working with the Inventive team to create curriculum materials linked to the engineers and the stories.

NUSTEM Team: Carol Davenport, Jonathan Sanderson, Antonio Portas

External Partners: Professor Trevor Cox, Adam Fowler, Anna Scott-Brown, Annabeth Robinson, Gill Davies

Funder: EPSRC

A collaboration with the making and tinkering experts at the Centre for Life, this three-year project will bring physical computing to families and communities across the region. Participants will add their own biological and technological distinctiveness to an ever-growing network of robots.

For more information, see the Connect pages.

NUSTEM Team: Jonathan Sanderson, Joe Shimwell, Carol Davenport, Annie Padwick
External partners: Centre for Life
Funder: North of Tyne Combined Authority

SOLARNET is a European Commission project aimed at fostering networking between around 600 European solar scientists, conducting joint research activity and supporting access to research infrastructures. Some of the activities in the project involve training in scientific principles and in public engagement. NUSTEM is working with Dr Richard Morton to support the outreach activities of the project.

Funder: European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 824135.

We are working with Dr Paul Mann to develop activities exploring the impacts of climate change on Arctic ecosystems and communities.  Local artist, Dominic Smith, has helped us to use photography to model permafrost melting in an understandable and highly visual fashion.

NUSTEM Team: Joe Shimwell, Carol Davenport

Academic: Paul Mann

External Partners: Helix Arts and Dominic Smith

Funded by: Natural Environment Research Council, through their Changing Arctic Oceans programme

NUSTEM is collaborating with colleagues in the Department of Geography and researchers in Mexico City on the Mexico City Partnership on Health and Air Pollution Research and Engagement (MANAPRE).  The project is looking at Air quality in Mexico City.  NUSTEM have created a series of science and career lesson inserts for teachers in Mexico to use to teach their students about what air quality is, and how it can be improved. You can find the Spanish and English versions of the resources here.

NUSTEM Team: Antonio Portas, Carol Davenport

Northumbria University Academic Team: Anil Namdeo, Jane Entwistle, Lindsay Bramwell

Funded by: British Council Newton Fund

CITE is a study which provides training for trainee teachers and their mentors about careers in the primary school.  The training consists of three sessions and gap task which explore unconscious bias, careers aspirations and employability characteristics in primary schools.

The training has also been used with other primary school teachers and was delivered both face to face and online.

NUSTEM team: Carol Davenport, Joe Shimwell, Annie Padwick

External partner: North East LEP

Funder: Careers and Enterprise Company

Exploring Extreme Environments (E3) uses science, poetry and art linked to the extreme environments found in the Sun and Antarctica to engage and educate children.

Towards the end of the project there will be an Antarctica-inspired community performance of poetry and sounds by Katrina Porteous (poet) and Peter Zinovieff (composer) to help showcase the amazing relationship between art and science.

NUSTEM Team: Carol Davenport, Annie Padwick, Joe Shimwell, Mel Horan, Jonathan Sanderson
Academic team: John Woodward, James McLaughlin, Richard Morton

External partners: Katrina Porteous, Peter Zinovieff, Helen Schell, Discovery Museum

Funder: STFC

The Union Chain Bridge is a historic bridge near Berwick upon Tweed which was completed in 1820 and was then the longest chain suspension bridge in the World.  Two hundred years on, the bridge was in need of refurbishment, and a partnership between Northumberland County Council, Scottish Borders Council, Museums Northumberland and supported by the Friends of the Union Chain bridge came together to bid for funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

As part of the preparation of that bid, NUSTEM drew up a vision for a STEM learning programme that would bring an understanding of the sicnece and engineering involved to children, teachers and families in schools within a 10 mile of Berwick.

NUSTEM Team: Jonathan Sanderson, Carol Davenport

External partners: Jane Miller, Anita Wan, Rowan Brown (Museums Northumberland)

Funder: Northumberland County Council / Heritage Lottery Fund

Working with the industry association for gear specialists within mechanical engineering, we developed a practical workshop for primary schools and trained BGA members to deliver the workshop nationwide.

NUSTEM team: Joe Shimwell, Jonathan Sanderson, Carol Davenport

Funder: British Gear Association

The North East Collaborative Outreach programme involved the five universities and 19 colleges in the North East region.  As part of the special projects fund, NUSTEM created two teacher CPD sessions on careers in the curriculum and unconscious bias.  We also wrote science topic worksheets using (mostly local) companies as a context that teachers could use in their classrooms.

NUSTEM Team: Carol Davenport, Jonathan Sanderson

External partners: Alom Shaha, James Brown, Anne Willis, Cathryn Arnold

Funding: HEFCE

Engineering for Families is a 6-week family-learning course developed for primary school children and their parents/carers.  Each session introduced families to a different branch of engineering, and allowed carers and children to create and build together in a relaxed atmosphere.  The sessions were delivered at six schools in Blyth, and there was also teacher CPD so that the schools could continue to deliver the club themselves.

NUSTEM Team: Joe Shimwell, Dan Wilkinson, Carol Davenport, Antonio Portas

Funded by: Platten Family fund at the Community Foundation

Working with physics teachers Alom Shaha and Christina Astin, NUSTEM produced a series of films for A-level Physics teachers.  The films showed different ways to approach some of the required practicals in A-level Physics in England.

NUSTEM Team involved: Carol Davenport, Jonathan Sanderson

Funded by: Ogden Trust, Northumbria University

External partners: Physics Partners

We developed a Maker Lab allowed us to purchase maker tools and equipment which could be used with young people either in Think Lab, or in schools and other venues.  This meant that we could include lots of hands-on tinkering and making activities in partner schools.  It also helped us to develop installations for Maker Faire to show engineering and design thinking in action.

Reece also funded three yearly summer schools for year 12 female students who were studying Maths and Physics at A-level (or equivalent) and considering Engineering at University.  The three week long summer schools introduced the students to a range of local engineering companies and helped them to think about how they could make a difference in the world through STEM.

NUSTEM Team involved: Carol Davenport, Emma Garrick, Jonathan Sanderson, Joe Shimwell, Annie Padwick

Funder: Reece Foundation

We started as ‘Think Physics,’ an ambitious three-year iniative funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England as a ‘Catalyst’ project.  Our original aim was to increase the number of young people studying A-level physics and physics related degrees.  However, we knew from the beginning that we had to plan for the longer term – about 20 years – to really see a change in the number of young people studying physics, and STEM subjects more widely.

NUSTEM Team involved: Everyone