Awardees

Anytime, Anywhere Engineers will provide primary school children from rural communities and their families with a unique insight into the world of engineering. Through five interactive online family STEM club sessions, children will learn about life as an engineer as they are guided through a series of activities based on real-life engineering practices and principles. Led by the National Farmers’ Union, each session will be hosted by agricultural engineers, alongside experienced education practitioners.

Working with award-winning engineer and storyteller Dr Anna Ploszajski and public engagement professional Dr Steve Cross, Engineers from diverse engineering fields across the UK will write short bedtime stories about their area of engineering expertise that will inspire children.

Youth BLAST Media Fellows will be matched with both an engineer and a creative mentor and receive a bursary that includes a small event production budget. The Fellows will attend multimedia and science communication masterclasses and be connected to engineering and media networks, and career development opportunities. The creative content generated through the Fellowship will be platformed through BLAST Fest live and online events, and the cohort’s journey collated into a final short film.

The project team from Newcastle University will work with underrepresented group from the Northeast and Northwest of England. Build-a-Bear 2.0 will build awareness of the impact of plastic on the environment and on human health and will show how engineers are working to reduce plastic waste and inspire a young generation of future engineers to take action and contribute to sustainability.

Using the Bragg Centre for Materials Research at the University of Leeds as a platform, the project will connect engineers and artists to work together and explore innovation in materials design.

A team of drama practitioners from The Play House and eight PhD and MEng Engineering students from the University of Birmingham's Mechanical Engineering Department will develop a series of 12 immersive drama and engineering workshops, which will be delivered to 240 Year 5 children from four inner-city primary schools.

Ideas Foundation will work engineers from diverse backgrounds and challenge them to create online stories that will change the perception of engineering on platforms such as TikTok that are trying to increase the quality of their education content. The online stories will be aimed at young people and their families who are increasingly using online platforms for careers insights.

Engineering for All will establish access and equal opportunity into engineering, raising awareness of engineering and a wider understanding of its importance in today’s world. It will inspire groups with lower aspiration, participation and representation in engineering and sustainable technology such as Wind Energy, Robotics, Precision Engineering, Aeronautical, Electronics, Mechanical, Composites, Marine etc.

In Engineering Heroes of the Future, Engineers will help to design and deliver an entertaining investigative game about future roles in engineering. The game will be designed to enable a diverse audience of 8 to 13 year olds to collaborate, play and socialise.

Engineering Humans is a virtual programme showcasing robotics, human rehabilitation and enhancement technology to inspire the next wave of engineers from Central and Eastern Lancashire.

Engineering In Your Future: Sustainable City will see Engineers from Swansea University develop several public engagement activities that focus on the role of engineering in working toward the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

In Engineering Play: Activity Design for Pre-School Innovators, Heriot-Watt University, and Nurture the Play will work with 20 engineers to design and deliver activities communicating engineering concepts to pre-schoolers and their families through play.

Using household items and materials from their local environment, Key Stage 4 students and teachers from diverse communities in the West Midlands will take part in a series of workshops about sustainability in engineering.

In Engineering: Take a closer look, Manufacturing NI will work with engineers from 15 local engineering firms to help them engage with and deliver a series of engineering inspired events and activities as part of Manufacturing Month Northern Ireland in May 2021 and through to May 2022.

ICanToo brings together engineers with underachieving Year 9-11 students in West Cumbria to provide inspirational, educational, and unique STEM-related experiences. Activities will range from inspirational talks to engineering facility visits, regular assertive mentoring, culminating in a residential trip to an industrial city to explore its engineering heritage.

In Ingenious Engineering, Bangor University will work with local sixth-formers in North Wales, aged between 16 and 18. Cutting through traditional academic boundaries with mentoring from industrial and academic partners, they will embrace ingenious and enterprising aspects of engineering to support the rural community in the North West Wales region.

The National Literacy Trust will deliver a fully immersive experience in the world of work for children, which will be followed up with a half term of classroom lessons exploring different roles each week.

Let’s Play Wester Hailes is a collaboration between community arts organisation WHALE Arts and the School of Computing at Edinburgh Napier University. The project will engage with young people in Wester Hailes to create and code a series of video games based around the area in which they live.

New Scots Connect will link engineers with New Scots, including refugees and asylum seekers and those with diverse migration backgrounds in Scotland. Creative engineering-themed activities, a youth-led engineering community project and field visits are just some of the initiatives that will support the development of transferable skills and technical English language as well as cross-cultural exchange and learning.

REACH will also enable outreach activities and promotion of the diverse and multifaceted nature of bioengineering, particularly targeting students in schools and universities as well as engineering graduates who have drifted away from the field or who want to apply their engineering skills to advancing healthcare and wellbeing.

Regional Community Celebrations of STEM will provide schools in remote communities of Scotland, Highland, Shetland and Orkney, with funding to develop a STEM project to showcase and compete for primary and secondary Regional Club of the Year titles.

The Future Food Engineering & Enterprise Challenge will pair engineer mentors and young people from marginalised and under-represented groups across Merseyside to engineer solutions to the global climate emergency through a multi-stage, inter-school enterprise competition.

The Janus Project: Engineering the Past and the Future is a new outreach initiative from Loughborough University that aims to engage local students with engineering by encouraging them to examine the recent history of the sector and consider how it will shape the future.

Bloodhound education will raise the profile of careers in STEM by providing the opportunity for students to engage in practical activities which develop the essential work skills which will be transferrable in any career.

Working together, Leeds Libraries, Leeds Museums and the University of Leeds will create a modular STEAM-focused series of activities, focusing on tackling environmental issues and using developments in technology for societal and environmental good.