Photography credit Emma Kauldhar
- New round of Ingenious programme awards sixteen projects, with grants of up to £30,000 to support public engagement activities
- Projects aim to inspire future generations of engineers and work with diverse audiences across the UK
The Royal Academy of Engineering has announced 16 new Ingenious awards for public engagement projects designed to inspire the next generation of engineers. The programme started in 2007 and is funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology to support grants of up to £30,000.
The newly funded projects will engage communities throughout the UK to help reach underrepresented audiences and change perceptions of engineering. The programme provides engineers with the necessary communication skills to share their stories and engineering expertise with the public.
This year's projects focus on topics from climate change, healthcare, diversity and inclusion and ethical innovation to a ballet-inspired engineering initiative.
The Mechanics of Life: Movement, Mobility and Me will bring together engineers at the University of Leeds and creatives at Northern Ballet to engage a diverse audience with the mechanics of movement through dance. The project will culminate in an experience day for high school students where they will co-design an engineering-inspired performance, choreographed and performed by Northern Ballet and digitally captured in film.
Engineer4Health is a project being run by Great Ormond Street Hospital that will allow children in inner London schools to gain experience of clinical and healthcare engineering.
Many projects are addressing climate issues, including Rubbish Robots: Making Robots from Rubbish, which will inspire pupils around central Scotland to build new kinds of robots from e-textiles and e-waste. Living laboratory: Climate action will introduce students to hydro-environmental engineering with smart sensors.
Facing The Future: encouraging female future engineers in STEM will bring together girls, young women and female engineers to challenge stereotypes, address misconceptions and inspire students from different backgrounds to consider engineering. Diversity and inclusion is at the heart of many Ingenious projects. Proud to be an Engineer will showcase diverse stories from engineers from a range of backgrounds typically underrepresented in the industry, with a focus on engineers who identify as LGBTQ+ and engineers with a disability.
Ingenious Panel Chair Professor Lucy Rogers FREng said:
“Ask 100 different people “What is engineering?” and you’ll get 100 different responses. One reason is because engineers are everywhere – and in every industry. From the people who design the medical equipment for hospitals, to those who ensure bridges are safe, from those that write the code to make sure our phones work, to those who work out how to recycle our waste. There are many stories of engineers doing great things, but often these are not told.”
“The Ingenious programme provides engineers with opportunities to further develop their communication skills, enabling them to illustrate their work and inspire the public in new, creative ways.
"These Ingenious projects can help change the perception of engineering and encourage more people to engage with the profession - and maybe even aspire to become an engineer.”
The full list of funded Ingenious projects 2023
National/multicentre
Teen Tethics
There is growing recognition that engineering should be ethically principled and socially/environmentally responsible, but the views of young people are rarely collected and included in this debate. The TeenTethics project will connect engineers with teenage innovators from across the UK. Together they will explore the ethics of decision-making and trade-offs that occur during engineering and tech innovation.
Run by Award-winning charity TeenTech (CEO Maggie Philbin OBE) and supported by STEM engagement specialists Scientia Scripta, the project will give mid-career and early-career engineers support and confidence to share personal stories about ethical innovation dilemmas in an engaging and powerful way through both virtual and in school TeenTethic Days.
Wales
ENGAGE – Engineering Animations Engagement project
The Engineering Animations Engagement project (ENGAGE), led by Cardiff University, will support engineers to share their stories and passion with young people in primary schools in South Wales as part of a series of workshops in animation. They will create short films that promote environmentalism, sustainability and net-zero emissions whilst raising awareness of equality, diversity and inclusive engineering. The resulting animations will be presented to a wider audience at school assemblies and further community engagement events.
Defending Our Futures
Defending our Futures is a collaboration between Xplore! Science Discovery Centre, the Defence Electronics and Components Agency (DECA), and schools in northeast Wales.
DECA engineers will co-create interactive activities with Xplore! Science Communicator staff, before co-delivering them to 400 learners in the spring and summer terms 2024. The activities will focus on environmentally sustainable solutions for a variety of engineering conundrums faced by DECA.
The programme aims to raise the aspirations of the learners and ensure they understand the wide-ranging nature of engineering roles. It will develop the public engagement skills of the engineers at DECA and increase the engineering knowledge of staff at Xplore!.
Scotland
Rubbish Robots: Making Robots from Rubbish
The UK produced 23.9 kg per capita of e-waste last year – the second highest level in the world and predicted to increase. Typically, e-waste comes from a combination of computers, consumer electronic devices, TVs, and smart e-textiles. Robots are typically made from many of these materials and as more and more robots are being used, they will contribute to the e-waste problem.
Rubbish Robots will work with pupils around central Scotland on building new kinds of robots from e-textiles and e-waste, both improving their engineering and design skills and engaging with great engineers.
Engineering Innovation - Developing Critical Skills in Future Engineers
Engineering Innovation will develop the public engagement skills of 40 engineers working across a range of disciplines as they co-design a variety of hands-on family activities with the Glasgow Science Centre team. The activities will aim to inspire young people to harness their full potential through developing critical skills, solving engineering problems and creating future solutions to play a key role in transforming our society. Engineers will gain valuable face to face public engagement experience as they support the delivery of these activities to family groups.
SoAreWeReallyEthicalEngineers? Engaging young engineers to help make a better world
From combatting climate change, to improving pharmaceuticals for global health, society needs chemical engineers to solve many critical problems over the next decades. This will only happen if engineers, researchers and industries have a strong ethical commitment: a determination to use engineering to prioritise the environment, society and wellbeing.
This project will enable the engineers of the future—kids at school right now— to explore for themselves the ethics behind the latest innovations in chemical engineering. Groups of children from schools across Glasgow and the West of Scotland will be mentored by engineering researchers as they look at the ethics behind the researchers’ work, producing videos, blogs and presentations. The students will help to build an Engineering Ethics Resource Bank, which over the coming critical years, will help schools, businesses, universities and policymakers ask—and answer—the question: So Are We Really Ethical Engineers?
North West
Engineering a Sustainable Energy Supply
Engineering a Sustainable Energy Supply has been developed by the careers education charity 4wardFutures. The project will provide engineers with the training and support required to develop and deliver inspiring and engaging workshops that will introduce young people aged 8 to 11 to the work engineers are doing to develop a sustainable energy system.
Through a series of live and online workshops, engineers will be able to share their passion, engineering knowledge and the journey they have followed in becoming an engineer in a way that will inspire young people to want to follow a career in engineering.
Yorkshire and the Humber
The Mechanics of Life: Movement, Mobility and Me
This ingenious collaboration brings together engineers at the University of Leeds and creatives at Northern Ballet to engage a diverse audience with the mechanics of movement through dance. Through creative exploration of motion, this project aims to inspire an understanding of medical engineering and its impact on health and wellbeing in society.
The project will culminate in an experience day for high school students where they will co-design an engineering-inspired performance, which will be choreographed and performed by Northern Ballet, and digitally captured in film. Through this unique collaboration, the project seeks to create lasting relationships across arts, science, and engineering.
North East
Facing The Future: encouraging female future engineers in STEM
Facing the Future aims to bring together girls, young women, and female engineers to challenge stereotypes, address misconceptions and inspire more diversity in the future STEM talent pipeline in the North East.
With opportunities for the public to engage with female engineers in a variety of sectors, this project will build on the established work of The Common Room’s Face of Engineering project, and lead into future endeavours. By placing engineers at the heart of each stage of our process we will give them opportunities to learn more about how a successful programme of public engagement operates, provide them with activities to utilise post project through a Facing the Future tool kit and have the chance to hone their communication skills with members of the public.
South West
Science Hunters: Engineering for Sustainable Societies
Science Hunters: Engineering for Sustainable Societies is a project run by UWE Bristol that will help children from underrepresented backgrounds discover the many facets of engineering involved in sustainable development and provide them with opportunities to apply their newfound knowledge by creating their own model sustainable solutions and communities in Minecraft.
Building on their well-developed ‘Science Hunters’ approach, they will collaborate with engineers to design and develop 12 sustainable, ecological engineering design-based sessions, linking engineering and engineers to the Sustainable Development Goals and future sustainable societal solutions. These will be delivered, alongside engineers, to schools and community settings.
Engineering Superhero's: Engineering to Save the Planet
Not all superheroes wear capes. Now more than ever, we need the engineers of tomorrow to create innovative solutions to save our planet. Design West, a centre of excellence for placemaking and the built environment, will produce an inspiring programme of workshops and public engagement that focus on the role of engineering in shaping our world and tackling climate change. The project focuses on our route to net zero and a greener world, engaging a new generation of diverse young people with engineers currently at the forefront of combatting climate change.
East of England
Living laboratory: Climate action
Living laboratory: climate action will empower young people from underrepresented groups to harness the power of engineering and build more sustainable communities.
This collaboration between Churchill College and the Department of Engineering at the University of Cambridge will bring together Y9-10 pupils with engineer mentors to carry out authentic research in hydro-environmental engineering with smart sensors. Participants will present their findings and make recommendations about sustainable urban infrastructure in their own communities.
Living Laboratory will promote the sharing of ideas, dreams, knowledge and skills across generations and the project team look forward to seeing everyone who takes part grow in confidence communicating about engineering and working together for a sustainable future.
MATERIALS: MATERIals for Active Learning in Schools
Addressing global challenges such as sustainability, green energy, better transport and improved healthcare depends on the discovery and development of new materials. However, a lack of familiarity means that pupils from underprivileged backgrounds are less likely to follow these career paths in fields that are often highly paid.
Cranfield University will bring materials engineering to key stage 2 pupils from schools in areas of multiple deprivation, taking engineers to schools and pupils to campus, to show them how materials engineering affects their everyday life and foster a life-long interest in engineering in an underrepresented group.
London
Proud to be an Engineer
Proud to be an Engineer will showcase diverse stories of engineers from a range of backgrounds typically underrepresented in the industry, with a focus on engineers who identify as LGBTQ+ and engineers with a disability.
Proud to be an Engineer will provide engineers with bespoke public engagement training delivered by Queen Mary University of London. The engineers will then create an engaging exhibition display with the support and guidance of experts from the university.
In the summer of 2024, the engineers will showcase their stories at two community festival events, one for schools and colleges in East London, and the second festival will be open to the local community. Through these two public engagement events, Proud to be an Engineer aims to develop inspiring role models who will change perspectives.
Engineer4Health
Engineer4Health is a project run by Great Ormond Street Hospital to allow children in inner London schools to gain experience of clinical and healthcare engineering.
Students will be sent a ‘work experience kit’, an interactive engineering project using simple electronics and coding skills designed to solve a real-world problem. At the end of their project, they will be given the opportunity to present and discuss their projects with a panel of clinical engineers from the local area. The engineers will give feedback and help students draw links to applications in real clinical settings.
Playful Engineers: Sustaining Futures
Through co-creating playful solutions with children to local environmental problems and showcasing their ideas on the high street, this project aims to raise awareness of how engineering and young people contribute to sustainable development.
Through a series of interactive workshops facilitated by a diverse group of engineer volunteers, children from local primary and secondary schools will learn how engineering shapes the world around them, using computer-aided design to help address local sustainability challenges. The final designs will be presented and shared on social media, the company website and in a playful participatory exhibition in retail shopping centres, which will be open to the public. This will allow members of the public to view models and animations of the children's final designs, respond to sustainability challenges and learn more about the impact of engineering careers.
Notes for editors
1. Ingenious is an awards scheme, run by the Royal Academy of Engineering, for projects that engage the public with engineers and engineering. The scheme is supported by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology.
The Ingenious programme aims to:
- inspire creative public engagement with engineering projects
- motivate engineers to share their stories, passion and expertise with wider audiences and develop their communication and engagement skills
- raise awareness of the diversity, nature and impact of engineering among people of all ages and backgrounds
- provide opportunities for engineers to engage with members of the public from groups currently underrepresented in engineering.
Ingenious has funded over 250 projects to date, providing opportunities for over 7,000 engineers to take part in public engagement activities, to gain skills in communication and to help bring engineering to the very centre of society. Ingenious projects have reached over 3.2 million members of the public.
2. The Royal Academy of Engineering is harnessing the power of engineering to build a sustainable society and an inclusive economy that works for everyone.
In collaboration with our Fellows and partners, we’re growing talent and developing skills for the future, driving innovation and building global partnerships, and influencing policy and engaging the public.
Together we’re working to tackle the greatest challenges of our age.
For media enquiries please contact: Megan Davenport-Connolly at the Royal Academy of Engineering Tel. +44 207 766 0725; email: Megan [email protected]