Month: March 2023

Volunteer at Grantham Climate Art Prize competition

Grantham Climate Art Prize – opportunities for student and staff researchers at the Great Exhibition Road Festival on Sat 17 – Sun 18 June 2022

Interested in doing some outreach with young people to raise awareness about climate change? The team organising this year’s Grantham Climate Art Prize competition would love to hear from you. We are hosting a series of workshops for 12 – 25 year olds to design a mural capturing a vision of a cooler, more sustainable world – our world in 2050. The aim is to draw attention to the steps we can all take to reduce our impact on the planet as detailed in the 9 things you can do about climate change.

Workshops will take place in London (and other UK locations TBC) in June – August, including at the Great Exhibition Road Festival on 17 – 18 June.

We have two roles at the festival:

  1. To talk about climate change – what it is, what can be done to reduce its impacts and how urgently change needs to happen. A mural artist will then talk about design techniques for creating an outstanding eye-catching mural that motivates individuals to stop, think and make a difference.
  2. To greet guests, explain the activity, give out materials, liaise between young people, scientists and artists and answer any questions.

For you this will be an opportunity to enhance your communication skills and also collaborate with a diverse group of young people. We hope through these workshops that young people will come up with some fantastic designs for outdoor murals in public spaces. We are partnering with Octopus Energy, as we did for our 2021 art prize, and expect this will get good media and social media coverage again. After the winning designs have been chosen and murals have been painted, winning and runner up designs will also be displayed on billboard and in exhibitions.

Students and scientists involved in the last art prize gave very positive feedback! For more info please contact Linsey Wynton (Media and Outreach Officer) l.wynton@imperial.ac.uk

Volunteer at Grantham’s Climate Friendly Pop Up Kitchen

Can you help for a couple of hours at Grantham’s Climate Friendly Pop Up Kitchen at the Great Exhibition Road Festival on Sat 17 – Sun 18 June 2022

Interested in planet-friendly eating? The Grantham Institute is supporting a Challenge Team of DTP students to run a stall with professional chefs who’ll create samples of sustainable meals – and give cooking demos – at this year’s festival following the success of last year’s Climate-Friendly Pop-Up Kitchen.

The food samples will be mainly plant-based. Recipe cards and QR codes for these will be available too. There will also be an interactive quiz about climate-friendly eating, based on a similar activity that proved popular last year – with prizes!

How can you help?

  • Helping to set up the stall and ensure it runs smoothly and helping pack up at the end. There will be a rota with breaks.
  • Engaging visitors and giving out leaflets and recipe cards like these (on recycled paper and/ or as QR codes).
  • Offering visitors food samples and chatting to them about possible tweaks they might consider making to the meals they cook/ eat.
  • Supporting the quiz for all ages likely to focus on which food items are “low climate-footprint” and which are “high/higher climate-footprint”.

Time slots

We are keen to have volunteers sign up to a 2-hour slot – which promises to be a great experience in science communication. During that time you will need to be at the activity at the Festival site at South Kensington in the Sir Alexander Fleming building. We will in advance listen to all your ideas and offer clear instructions, a pre-event briefing and you will be carrying out your duties in teams of two.

10am – 12noon Setting up

12noon – 2pm Chatting to visitors about sustainable food, quiz, giving out samples

2 – 4pm Chatting to visitors about sustainable food, quiz, giving out samples

4 – 6pm Chatting to visitors about sustainable food, quiz, giving out samples

6 – 7pm Tidying up

Feedback from last year was positive from staff and students so we are looking forward to hearing from you!

To sign up please contact Pop-Up Kitchen Team Leader Romain Tort r.tort21@imperial.ac.uk and/ or Linsey Wynton Media and Outreach Officer at the Grantham Institute l.wynton@imperial.ac.uk

Great Exhibition Road Festival – 17 & 18 June 2023

Celebrate science, creativity and innovation at the Great Exhibition Road Festival

Returning for another year, join us on 17-18 June 2023 to celebrate the power of awe and wonder to inspire us, motivate change and spark innovation in South Kensington at the Great Exhibition Road Festival.

Come along for an unmissable weekend packed full of free science and arts events for all ages from Imperial College London, the Natural History Museum, Science Museum, V&A and more. Plus, you can hear an eclectic range of performances on the main stage from the Royal Albert Hall and Royal College of Music.

We’ve just released a small taste of some of the events in store this summer. Take part in a hands-on workshop and extract DNA from a strawberry, hear about the biggest dinosaurs that ever lived, or step into a world of virtual reality!

Register now for the Festival to hear the latest updates about the Festival weekend and find out when free tickets for some of our popular talks, workshops and tours open for registration.

Register now for free >

Get involved with Tech Hangouts

Do you study or work in tech at Imperial? The Tech Hangouts programme is aiming to engage youth groups from the White City local area to the wide world of tech and technicians through fun, interactive game-based sessions. The young people will have the chance to meet technicians and tech professionals, find out more about them and their careers, get hands-on with some tech, and understand how they can have a say on what goes on in the tech world.

If you’d like to get involved, please find out more: bit.ly/tech-hangouts