Engineering in the Community | Engineering Our Future

MAKERS is celebrating the return of its repair café with a repair skills day

katcorbett | 15 August 202420 September 2024

Following the tremendous success of the UWE Bristol Repair Café, launched in 2023 as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering-funded MAKERS Project, the School of Engineering is excited to announce its return with a Repair Skills Day on September 25th, as part of Starting Block.

In its first year, the Repair Café has prevented 248kg of waste and saved 1.5 tonnes of CO2 emissions—the equivalent of growing 26 tree seedlings for 10 years.

Students who volunteer regularly at the Repair Café also earn digital skills badges and receive repair kits to further develop their skills at home or at one of the many repair cafés across Bristol.

Student volunteers work alongside industry professionals and local community members, offering valuable networking opportunities and connections with wider repair initiatives across the city.

UWE Bristol’s Repair Café

The MAKERS Team is organising a series of repair-focused workshops on September 25^th, perfect for those eager to make a positive impact by joining the UWE Bristol Repair Café. These workshops are open to students and a limited number of staff as well.

Soldering workshops

This practical soldering workshop, led by School of Engineering Technician Will Hadrill, is designed to equip participants with valuable skills that can also enhance their CVs. This hands-on session is particularly beneficial for those interested in volunteering at the UWE Bristol Repair Café.

What Participants Will Learn:

Soldering Basics: The workshop covers the fundamentals of soldering, including safety guidelines and essential tools.
Practical Experience: Attendees will practise creating clean, strong solder joints on circuit boards and electronic components.
Repair Skills: The session will help participants develop the ability to repair electronic devices, a key skill for those looking to contribute to the UWE Bristol Repair Café.

Session 1: 11am – 12.30pm
Session 2: 1.30pm – 3pm

Location: 3Z032 in the School of Engineering (Z Block)

Garment mending workshop

Learning how to repair clothes is a useful skill that will help extend the life of your favourite garments.

In this class, Meret from Re_Thrindle will teach basic mending techniques, including how to fix seams and hems, reattach buttons, and do simple patching. Participants should bring along an item that needs mending; all other materials will be provided.

What you’ll learn:

A variety of stitching techniques and simple patching
Beginner-friendly repair skills
How to mend a much-loved piece of clothing

This workshop is ideal for fixing broken seams, missing buttons, and minor repairs and will run from 12.30 – 3pm on September 25th in the Atrium of the School of Engineering (Z Block).

Dr Bike session

A free safety inspection, along with gear and brake adjustment, all done in the spirit of sustainability and repair. This service includes brake blocks and cables when necessary. Each participant receives a safety inspection, and a detailed report on their bike’s condition.

This service is offered by the Bristol Bike Project, a member-driven cooperative focused on repairing and redistributing bicycles within the community. Their mission is to support people from all backgrounds in getting on two wheels, fostering an inclusive and empowering experience for all.

Free drop-in, 11 am – 3pm, School of Engineering (Z Block), Atrium.

Eastville Old Library and the MAKERS Project: Cultivating Community through Food Growing and Sewing Workshops

katcorbett | 10 July 202410 July 2024

Over the past year, the MAKERS Project, which was funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Diversity Impact Programme, has partnered with the Eastville Old Library to deliver workshops focused on food growing, sewing, and textile repair.

About the Old Library

The Old Library, a volunteer-run community hub, is situated in the heart of the South Lockleaze & Purdown neighborhood. It offers a variety of activities, events, a café, a kids’ space, a lounge, a book swap, a community garden, and a repair café. Established by the South Lockleaze & Purdown Neighbourhood Group C.I.C. after the closure of their local library in 2016 due to budget cuts, the Old Library aims to foster a more social, safe, and strong community in North Bristol. As South Lockleaze is one of the most deprived areas in Bristol, community spaces like the Old Library are essential for residents.

University Collaboration

UWE Bristol and its School of Engineering have longstanding ties with the Old Library. They have previously supported the establishment of a weekly STEM Club and a monthly repair café, and there is also a monthly Climate Book Club, run by Sarah Robertson from the English Literature Department.

Food Growing Workshops

To make food growing accessible to people from all backgrounds, the Old Library, leveraging its proximity to local allotments, partnered with Sara Venn from Edible Bristol. This initiative aimed to address food insecurity and promote sustainable growing methods in the area. Two workshops were held for participants involved in local community growing projects, including Really Wild Lockleaze, Hillfields Community Garden, St Werburgh’s City Farm Allotments, Eastville Welcome Space, and Lockleaze Neighbourhood Trust. These sessions facilitated skill-sharing and connections with other Bristol groups.

The workshops covered soil and regenerative gardening, as well as seeds and seed saving. Participants learned about growing methods that work with nature, support biodiversity, and produce healthy food at minimal cost, making these practices accessible to people from lower-income backgrounds.

Sewing and Upcycling Workshops

Recognising the fashion industry’s impact on climate change, the Old Library organised five sewing, mending, and upcycling classes in collaboration with sustainable fashion workshop and service provider, Re_Thrindle. Nineteen locals, including three UWE Bristol students involved in the MAKERS Project, signed up to learn sewing machine use and garment repair, with priority given to those on low incomes.

Due to high demand, these sessions are set to continue after the summer, with more collaborations in the pipeline.

MAKERS project brings engineering skills to young people in St Paul’s

katcorbett | 21 June 202421 June 2024

The MAKERS project actively supported local community groups in helping them to develop new skills around making and repair, promoting self-sufficiency and empowerment of individuals and communities, and highlighting engineering as a career choice. As part of this, MAKERS collaborated with three remarkable community organisations in St Paul’s:

Bridging Histories: A project co-led with Bristol University, focused on uniting divided communities.
Each One Teach One: A violence prevention organisation dedicated to fostering peace.
Fancy Finance: An organisation assisting local residents in managing the pressures of the cost-of-living crisis.

The Workshops

The community partners and the MAKERS team co-designed a series of seven workshops running from April to June 2024. These sessions aimed to introduce participants to new engineering skills and inspire future aspirations:

Introduction to Basic Electronics (including soldering, see image above, taken by George Francis)
Scooter and (Electric) Bike Mechanics and Maintenance
An Introduction to Python Coding
Computer Aided Design (Tinkercad)
Routes into Higher Education and Engineering
Tour of UWE Bristol’s Engineering Building (Featuring Virtual Reality Rooms, Simulators, and a wind turbine building activity.)
Trip to Pytch Bristol (A sustainably run event production company.)

Impact and Participation

Each session was attended by up to 15 young people, supported by community experts and current/former UWE students and staff. Many participants faced significant barriers to higher education, so MAKERS focused on creating an inclusive and welcoming environment at the university, a place many had never visited before.

Learning and Future Collaborations

The project offered invaluable insights for both the university and community organisations. This experience has laid the groundwork for future collaborations, and the MAKERS team is excited about establishing a long-term partnership to continue supporting and empowering the community.

The MAKERS project was funded through the Diversity Impact Programme from the Royal Academy of Engineering, aiming to improve belonging for diverse engineers. The evaluation findings will be reported soon.

Partnership with Easton based Baggator Nexus leads to new community energy project

katcorbett | 15 May 202416 May 2024

Student-led designs for a new heat network serving Barton Hill’s tower blocks are being taken forward by Bristol Energy Cooperative and Baggator Nexus. Over 30 students on the third year Professionalism for Engineers module developed potential solutions for the Heat Network and pitched their ideas back to local residents. These proposals are being taken forward as a potential Community Energy project, called Barton Heat.

UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering have been long-term collaborators with Baggator Nexus, working on several community co-development projects.

Their outreach team have supported several cohorts of young people over the past five years, with STEM learning and engagement activities. These include the West in Minecraft sessions, and Tinkercad 3D design workshops, which were delivered as part of the MAKERS project.

Digital design workshops with children from St Mark’s Road Mosque

Tinkercad workshop at UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering with children from St Mark’s Road Mosque

This collaboration also continues to offer opportunities for Engineering Students to work on live brief projects, providing real world experience where they can contribute towards sustainability goals. This not only provides students with skills for their employability but contributes towards UWE Bristol’s mission as a Civic University with an aim to reach Net Zero by 2030.

A team of students are also currently helping to fix broken traffic and pollution sensors as part of the Royal Academy of Engineering funded project MAKERS, which will be installed on buildings in the area to help improve the air quality for its residents.

Working with Baggator provides a fantastic opportunity to support young people from under-represented groups in STEM, which fulfils UWE Bristol’s aims to diversify the STEM industry.

Inspire Sustainability team collaborating to bring engineering skills to the St Pauls community

joshuawarren | 16 April 202413 May 2024

The Inspire Sustainability team and the MAKERS project are pairing with the University of Bristol to support the delivery of several engineering skills workshops to the young community of St Pauls.

The series of weekly free workshops are aimed at young people from the community, and look to provide a chance to learn key engineering skills from local experts. The team behind the workshops hope to raise aspirations, and allow the young people a chance to learn from expert members from their own community, in a safe and secure environment.

The workshops are taking place in the Malcolm X Centre in St Pauls, and have been organised and supported by the staff at the Malcolm X, with input from members of the community itself. The UWE team and the University of Bristol team are aiding in the organisation and planning of the workshops, as well as providing facilitators and UWE staff to run some of the upcoming sessions and share their expertise.

This week, the first of the sessions took place. Several young people from the community were invited to have a go at some soldering and electronics, whilst opening up a broader conversation about their skills and what’s needed to succeed in an engineering career. UWE Bristol technician Will Hadrill led the session in which the young people were tasked with putting together and soldering an electronic buzzer-wire game. It proved a really enjoyable and valuable experience for the young people.

One of the young people, an A-Level engineering student in Filton Abbeywood hoping to learn more about career pathways, had never done soldering before and found the session really fun and enjoyable.

Future workshops are covering a wide range of topics including coding, computer-aided-design, and e-scooter maintenance.

To find out more about these sessions, contact the Inspire Sustainability team on engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk

Student engineers developing prototype of winning design from young engineer competition

joshuawarren | 15 April 202417 April 2024

The Leaders Award ‘If You Were an Engineer…’ national competition is partnering with UWE Bristol to again support this year’s competition, and bring to life an exciting prototype from one of last year’s winning young engineers.

The competition asks school children to imagine a creative and innovative solution to a problem, and design an inspiring prototype. The competition aims to bring together real-life engineers and schools, to provide STEM outreach, and also inspire the next generation of engineers.

A group of engineering students led by MAKERS Team member Hollie Lewis, are now planning to turn one of last year’s winning designs into reality. The team are working on creating a functioning prototype of an accessible shower design. The design aimed to try to make showering easier for those with disability, and also add some smart features to make finding the right temperature and pressure more convenient.

The group recently visited a retirement village to gain an insight into what is currently in use, and began making plans to innovate and improve. The group also spoke to a resident with mobility issues to learn from his perspective about the challenges that showering can pose.

Not only a valuable and challenging exercise for the team, it is hoped that the design will go on to form part of a student module project assessment. Students will move through the engineering design process to improve and refine the prototype with the support of School of Engineering technicians.

The UWE Bristol School of Engineering has hosted the judging panel and awards ceremony for the ‘If You Were and Engineer…’South West region in previous years, and will be again this year. The winning designs from this year will be on display in the School of Engineering after the event and during the upcoming Family Fun Day taking place on Saturday July 6th. You can find out more information about this by contacting engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk

Inspire Sustainability team at Wiltshire STEAM2024 Festival

joshuawarren | 8 March 20248 March 2024

Last week saw a huge number of young students from local schools engage with fun and engaging ‘STEAM’ activities at an event hosted at Trowbridge townhall by Wiltshire Council. (https://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/)

STEAM subjects (science, technology, engineering, arts, and maths) are an influence on every aspect of our daily lives, and the industries will continue to grow as we aim to move to a more sustainable future. For the young people whose future careers will be deep rooted in these skills and subjects, the Wiltshire STEAM event was an opportunity to come and experience some of the potential jobs, industries, and inspiring technology they could grow to be a part of.

UWE Bristol’s Inspire Sustainability team also attended the event, and held a stall showcasing the range of STEAM workshops and sessions that are available for the schools to book. These included the unique ‘The West in Minecraft’ worlds, which invited the young people to design and build solutions to problems in a virtual Bristol and Bath. Also, the ‘Engineering Curiosity’ top trumps cards that show real-life diverse engineers from the area. To find out more about these school workshops and what’s on offer, please visit digitaltrailblazers.net/resources or email engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk

There was a whole host of amazing activities for the young people to be inspired by at the event, including a huge working robot used in film and TV that tracked their movements, driving simulators, and first aid training. There really was something for everyone!

Feedback from the young people showed that it was a really worth-while event and successful in inspiring them with the STEAM subjects.

“I liked being able to make the kazoo and bring it home”

“I loved finding out about new jobs and how everything worked”

“My jumping bean family will be with me forever!”

“I found it really interesting with all the stuff they had. The robot was really cool”

“I think STEAM was really fun and cool and I learned a lot of good things”

“I think the thing I enjoyed most was the cyber security because it was fun cracking the code”

“I thought STEAM was really fun. The thing I enjoyed most was the one where you had to drive the car”

“Steam was good. I enjoyed the small controller robot”

“I like Steam because I liked doing all the activities. I liked doing the art and craft”

“I really liked steam it was fun. I would definitely go again. My favourite part was putting on the space suit”

“I liked the dinosaur stall because it was interesting”

“I liked the experiment with the air and the cup”

“It was nice, awesome, amazing, astonishing, outstanding”

Bristol City Council and Inspire Sustainability team: Children’s ideas for Bristol Temple Quarter regeneration project

joshuawarren | 1 March 20248 March 2024

The plans to redevelop Bristol’s Temple Quarter are currently being finalised, and the council want to know the opinions of local school children about what they want to see in the area. Bristol City Council have partnered with the School of Engineering’s Inspire Sustainability team to develop a school workshop allowing local school children to redesign the area in Minecraft.

Building on the successful ‘The West in Minecraft’ STEM outreach workshops (more information on the workshops here: https://www.digitaltrailblazers.net/resources/3a62f062-f9f1-43c8-bd28-1a01ce800f54), a newly-created Temple Quarter Minecraft model is going to be used for the first time. Students will be able to use the engineering design process to discuss the challenges that Bristol faces in reaching net-zero commitments and the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals to improve the Temple Quarter area, before using Minecraft as a design tool, and working with UWE’s engineering student ambassadors to design and create their own vision for the area. The students ideas will then be collected and considered by the council team as it draws up plans for the future direction of the Temple Quarter project. It’s a chance for the students to have a real-world impact and flag to the policy-makers the issues that matter to them. After all, they’re the ones that will grow to work and live in the area!

To find out more about the project, or to find out about booking a school for the workshop, please email engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk

UWE Bristol students support Easton campaign for better air with repair skills

katcorbett | 26 February 202427 June 2024

As part of the MAKERS project, UWE Bristol students recently had the opportunity to use their repair and making skills to support the Easton based Baggator Youth Group and “Residents Against Dirty Energy” (RADE) Bristol campaign for better air by helping them to fix their traffic and pollution sensors.

The community group uses sensors to measure traffic and air pollution in their area to support their campaign efforts. The collected air pollution data can be then be accessed on the Luftdaten pages, whilst life traffic data is available on the Telraam pages.

As the project has been running for a while, many of the sensors weren’t working as well as they used to, which is why UWE students were invited to support RADE to help fix the faulty sensors, helping the group to improve the quality of the collected data, which plays a key role in their campaign efforts.

It has been a fantastic repair session that was supported by five students and a technician from UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering. This was a great opportunity to learn some practical repair skills of electronics, whilst connecting with and supporting the community of East Bristol in their efforts to improve the air quality for its residents.

The group also especially enjoyed the lunch that was provided by the community and sourced from local businesses.

We would like to thank the community of Easton for being so welcoming to our students, and we look forward to hearing about updates from the project!

How the MAKERS project is supporting students to develop hands-on skills and boost employability

katcorbett | 10 February 202417 September 2024

The UWE MAKERS project has been going from strength to strength since it first launched in September last year to help improve belonging for diverse engineering students at UWE Bristol, through developing connections with local Maker and Repair communities in the region.

The project is funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering, and aims to support diverse students to continue their careers within engineering. Student feedback has helped the team to develop more employability benefits and direct industry links.

Networking opportunities

During the UWE Repair Café, students now get to work alongside STEM Ambassadors from Industry and Community Volunteers from the Bristol Repair Café Network, many of which are retired engineers themselves. This is a great way to meet and learn from experienced professionals, and connect over hands-on repair, whilst supporting the wider community and the University’s sustainability goals.

Free repair kit to take home

Once students have attended 5 MAKERS events, they can choose between a Hobbycraft Voucher, a Basic Household Repair toolkit, an electronics Device Repair Toolkit, which can be used alongside the freely available IFixIt Repair Guides. This is to enable them to apply their skills and learning at home, acquiring more confidence and practice in doing so.

Digital Skills Badges

MAKERS student volunteers earn digital Skills Badges, which can be used on LinkedIn profile and other social channels to help showcase any relevant skills earned, whilst also enabling badge earners to see job postings requiring those skills.

There are three types of badges: bronze, silver, and gold, depending on the level of involvement in the MAKERS project.

Repair Group and Technician Repair Support

MAKERS students can access technician support and facilities to help grow their repair skills and confidence. This includes the electronic maker space, the 3D printing facilities, and the fitting shop, with all the available tools. There are also a number of sewing machines and an overlocker available to use by those with an interest in textile repair.

Demonstrable Green Skills

The MAKERS project works with the Restart Project to measure their environmental impact, in particular in terms of how much waste has been saved from landfill, and how many CO2 emissions have the saved.

Get involved in MAKERS:

Students who would like to get involved can sign up here.

We particularly encourage women and students from Black, Asian and racially minoritised backgrounds to get in touch!