Anytime Anywhere, Engineers

Anytime, Anywhere Engineers is an Ingenious funded project that provides primary school children from rural communities and their families with a unique insight into the world of engineering. The project got underway in May 2021 and is run by the National Farmers’ Union and High-Impact Consultancy. Consisting of five interactive online family STEM club sessions as well as interactive 3D tours of five different engineering workplaces, the project is opening a door into the wonderful world of agricultural engineering.

For project lead Joshua Payne, Chief Education Manager at the National Farmers Union, the project’s focus is to open the door to the agricultural sector; “We knew early on that there was interest from the agricultural sector, and there hasn’t been very much done digitally around this. We worked with our partners including Syngenta and Harper Adams to create interactive online tours of their facilities”.

Making progress

Agricultural engineers are running online STEM sessions alongside experienced education practitioners, with the sessions recorded so they can be shared online with a wider audience. For the project team, it was important to focus on both accommodating an online audience as well as providing an accessible environment for the engineers. “For the live workshops with schools we worked on identifying what would work well online and the best way to facilitate this and decided on small Zoom meetings with engineers with a curriculum specialist from High Impact. We had 20 children on each call, it would have been difficult working with hundreds of kids at the same time!” Activities in the online sessions included felt tip pen chromatography and weed zapping.

The team are now working on the development of their STEM club sessions for secondary school pupils which, according to Josh, provides a whole new set of challenges. “We’re going to do the STEM clubs at 7pm, that way we can get the whole family involved. We know that parents play a big role in their children’s career aspirations, so we want to encourage them to get involved too”.

Alongside these STEM club sessions, the project team have filmed interactive 3D tours of five different engineering workplaces so that children can explore the world of engineering at their own pace. The interactive 3D tours were launched at Shrewsbury Food Festival early this year where guests were able to tour facilities at Syngenta, Harper Adams and many more using VR headsets. 1,750 virtual tours have taken place so far, with the project’s Anytime, Anywhere, Engineers website notching up visitors: 5,900 visitors to date.

Running a digital project

With the world still affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, any public engagement project must plan for the possibility of moving projects from in person to online. For Josh and the Anytime, Anywhere, Engineers team, planning resilience was at the heart of the project, “we planned a project that could go ahead under any circumstances, Plan A was also Plan Z!”

“We wanted to be mindful of planning an inclusive online experience, thinking about what devices our audience will be accessing things on, as many homes only have access to one laptop. We wanted to steer away from app-based content and planned a project that will be awesome online but can be reversed, so plan online with a view to do in face to face when it happens!”

Tacking challenges

For Josh, one of the most challenging aspects of the project at the beginning was getting word out to the right stakeholders and creating an awareness of the project. “You can have a great project, but

how do you get people to understand what you’re doing? We made sure we already had people in mind and gave them an initial sounding out to gauge their interest”.

The team wanted to promote how farming can be an amazing context for learning about STEM careers and in particular engineering. “Engineering can get lost in STEM”, says Josh, “so to have something in our arsenal which is about engineering was perfect.”

What's next

After Christmas, the team will look at how they can add to the longevity of the project and promote it over a long period of time. The team are already working with the Farmer’s Guardian, having introduced the magazine to the online platform. “The Farmer’s Guardian do a careers event in food and farming, which could be a potential commercial opportunity and a good legacy for the project”.