Science 4 Bristol

Small groups of children and young adults (5-8) will be transferred from Bristol’s schools and colleges using the charities minibus, for morning and afternoon sessions. They will be given up to 3-5 hours practical science teaching experience, in the form of exciting, brilliant projects with hands-on experience with advanced scientific instrumentation and with inspiring outcomes. The students will be supervised by at least two mentoring staff in both morning and afternoon sessions. The instruments and equipment will be on movable wheeled tables and will be operated in full compliance with health and safety regulations. Desks and chairs will also be provided. It is envisaged that no special alteration will have to be made to the building to conduct these safe scientific projects.

The centre will evolve first offering biotech, food chemistry, forensics, environmental and health science topics, with an emphasis on health and well-being. Further STEM subjects, such as technology and design, engineering and maths (e.g. Adriano/Raspberry pi computer projects, plastic and metallic 3d printers and maritime and aeronautical engineering), will be hopefully offered when the charity evolves. As well as offering students an inspirational science experience within term times, the charity will offer outside school terms classes with summer, winter and Easter learning. One of the objectives of the charity will be to encourage apprentice take-ups and we will work with a close collaboration with science and engineering apprentice industries.

The charity would also like to give out science goodie bags to children and young adults. An excellent example of what maybe contained in such a bag is the so called 50 cent microscopes (www.foldscope.com).