Review of the Year

Happy New Year to all our friends!
I thought we would share with you a review of the year and some pictures from 2016.

 This year has been one of ups and downs.
The good times - WOW! great events such as BigBang North West and Chem4All with LJMU but also we have missed getting together with old friends because budgets in schools are so tight that they haven't been able to afford us. That is very sad because we know how enjoyable a day with us is and how inspiring it can be for the staff.

our friends at Chestnut Lodge

We have tried hard whenever we have secured funding to share it around and we were thrilled when Mexichem sponsored a day with our friends at Chestnut Lodge. We had so much fun and even though we were saying goodbye and good luck to some of the older pupils we knew we had made an impact.

We had a wonderful if exhausting week at Ellesmere Port Boat museum with local schools at a STEM event organised by IGNITE. Every day we met new pupils and shared our smart materials workshops with them and made bath bombs to take home. We made over 500 during the week and smelled so much of the bubble gum fragrance that we stopped noticing it....our families didn't!

We met new schools this year - some in Cheshire and others in Liverpool where word seemed to get round about us resulting in a flurry of bookings. We also worked with AllAboutSTEM and Techniquest Glyndwr doing shows and workshops

Towards the end of the summer term we got busier and busier as schools used us for an end of year treat. We were happy to be asked back to a primary school by their PTA who decided rather than an end of year disco they would have a science show!

End of June/beginning of July was the culmination of the amazing Chem4All year. This project at LJMU is a long term intervention enthusing staff and pupils in Merseyside schools. We were part of the celebrations - three days of shows and loads of dry ice!

Probably the highlight of the year was BigBang North West which had a new venue - the Liverpool Exhibition Centre right on the waterfront. An amazing venue suitable for an amazing event. It just gets bigger and better each year.
Again we were on the main stage but this time because we were all in the one hall everyone stopped what they were doing to come and watch - 100s of people all fascinated by our science. The publicity pictures are incredible, the Tweets went wild on the day and overnight Helen became the poster girl for the event!!

This Autumn has been much quieter but that has given us time to be creative and we have updated our shows, streamlined our workshops and gathered some great gizmos. We are already getting bookings for British Science Week and our birthday month discount offer so it looks like things will be just as exciting in 2017. Our adventure continues.......