Inspire Sustainability team at Wiltshire STEAM2024 Festival

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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

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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

School of Engineering outreach activities featured in UWE Bristol’s Sustainability Report for 2021-22

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UWE Bristol declared a Climate and Ecological Emergency in 2020 and has since made a number of commitments in its 2030 Strategy towards tackling the environmental crisis. These include being carbon neutral by 2030, reduce water and energy use, cut waste and single-use plastic, support biodiversity, sustainable travel, and climate related research, and work with students to address climate change and environmental challenges through teaching, learning and curricula. UWE Bristol regularly publishes reports where it shares the progress in achieving these sustainability goals.

UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering outreach team are pleased to be featured multiple times in the university’s latest Sustainability Report!

We Make Our Future Planetarium Shows

The We Make Our Future Planetarium show features prominently in the report’s section about Research and Knowledge Exchange for Sustainable Development.

We Make Our Future sets out the idea that to achieve net zero and a low carbon global economy, everything we make, and use will need to be completely re-imagined and re-engineered. It aims to show that the digital revolution is boosting the potential for engineers’ design thinking to optimise not only the development process but also the potential for collaborative citizen engagement.

The show has been designed with planetarium experts Explorer Dome and was part of the DETI Inspire programme. The show was featured at COP26 in Glasgow in 2021 and has since been touring schools around the west of England thanks to funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering.

Whilst there are currently no funded shows available, schools can still book them directly through Explorer Dome. More information about the show, and how to book it is available on our Digital Trailblazers webpages.

Visit by Metro Mayor Dan Norris

The outreach team also had a mention in an article about Metro Mayor Dan Norris’ visit to UWE Bristol’s School of Engineering in June 2022: Metro Mayor meets young minds behind best of West of England clean tech.

Dan Norris met with skilled young engineers and entrepreneurs working on innovative projects, including drones for measuring air microplastics, leak-proof hydrogen storage containers, and crop growth optimization machines. These initiatives were funded through our Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI) programme, which received £5 million from the West of England Combined Authority.

During the visit, Mr. Norris also met learners from the Green Skills for Jobs and Entrepreneurship (Green Skills) project, which aims to upskill learners from Black, Asian, and minoritized ethnicities to support the region’s net-zero target.

Dissemination activities for education for sustainable development

With the publication of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Guidance by Advance HE and the Quality Assurance Agency (QAA) in 2021–22, Education for Sustainable Development received significant – and well-deserved – national attention.

Venkat Bakthavatchaalam, Laura Fogg-Rogers and Georgina Gough from the School of Engineering actively supported the dissemination of this document with a presentation at the 2022 Dresden Nexus Conference on the topic of Development and evaluation of a successful method to embed Sustainable Development Goals in engineering curriculum.

Another dissemination activity featured in the report is the Digital Engineering Technology and Innovation (DETI) Inspire outreach programme, which engaged children in primary and secondary education across the West of England, with a focus on disadvantaged areas.

Using curriculum-linked engineering outreach and careers support, it connected children with real-life, diverse engineering role models to widen participation and aspirations for STEM careers.

The Inspire programme was led by Dr Laura Fogg-Rogers, Senior Lecturer and Researcher at UWE Bristol, with support from Graphic Science, the STEM Ambassador hub of the West of England, and in collaboration with the Wessex Inspiration Network and Future Quest, leaders for Higher Education outreach into secondary schools of the region.

Over a thousand local children inspired to engineer a sustainable future

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The “We Make Our Future” planetarium show has been touring local West of England schools, encouraging children to think positively about the Climate Crisis and use human ingenuity to engineer a more sustainable future.

With generous funding from the Royal Academy of Engineering’s Ingenious grant scheme, the show has inspired approximately 1,550 children in the last three months!

All those children attend local schools in areas of socioeconomic deprivation, with 80% of them reporting that the show helped them to find out how engineering can help the world.

Children described the show as…

95% of teachers say they’d recommend the show to others.

The show was interactive and interesting, the children were engaged and could not wait to ask questions,” said a teacher from Four Acres Academy.

[The show] Really engaged the children and gave them a better understanding of what they can do to make a difference,” said a teacher from Fonthill Primary.

Engineering ‘We Make our Future’

The show was originally created in 2021 by Explorer Dome (a hands-on science company who travel the country to provide children a taster for science in their inflatable planetariums) in collaboration with UWE – with support from the Digital Engineering and Technology Innovation (DETI) programme.

The new funding from the Royal Academy of Engineers, has not only enabled Explorer Dome to visit more schools, but also enhanced children’s exposure to regional sustainability ambassadors – to raise aspirations and exposure of green engineering careers.

To showcase more ambassadors the UWE and Explorer Dome team have been:

Training – UWE arranged for the Explorer Dome team to train a diverse group of engineers in public engagement skills, in September at UWE’s Engineering building – you can read more about this event on the blog.

Role modelling – UWE and Explorer Dome are doing film shoots with engineers at sustainability focused engineering companies across Bristol – including at clean energy companies, Thrive Renewables and Belltown Power, and indoor farming technology company, LettUS Grow. These films will be shown during We Make Our Future shows to inspire children with the vast range of real-life, local green engineering role-models. See below, one of the films of engineer Olivia.

Green Skills – meanwhile the UWE team have arranged Green Skills career fairs at local schools, to further expose children to different companies and the people in them who work in sustainability. In particular, children at Hans Price Academy in November were challenged to rethink what “green skills” are – it’s not necessarily about having lots of local animal habitat knowledge, but about utilising whatever skills you have – from numbers to creativity – to build a sustainable future. You can read more about this initiative here.

180 pupils from Hans Price also got to go into the dome and see the We Make Our Future shows during this Eco-Week at their School.

Brilliant content, good pace & good interaction from students,” said a Hans Price teacher.

The Future of ‘We Make Our Future’

A further three schools are booked to see ‘We Make our Future’ in April and May, including a school for deaf children. And Explorer Dome are booked in for a day full of shows at UWE’s Engineering Family Fun Day on 1st July – more details to follow on this soon!

UWE are following up with schools who have had the shows already to signpost more educational materials and offer the UWE Inspire range of free workshops, some of which involve taking local STEM Ambassadors into schools. Seven schools are booked in to take part in these workshops in April/May.

Want to get a better glimpse into the We Make Our Future show – take a look at the video below:

Come along and be inspired by children’s inventions – 6th April

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On Thursday 6th April – pop along to GKN Aerospace Global Technology Centre for an hour (or as long as you want) to take a look at some of the intriguing inventions school children have been coming up with.

Children all over the country are currently furiously scribbling designs – all intended to solve some of the world’s most pressing issues. They are entering those ideas into the Leaders Award – and thousands of those entries will turn up at GKN (one of the Leaders Awards partners in the South West) for grading by our lovely local engineers.

Grading isn’t an onerous process – quite the opposite – you’ll simply be flicking through some drawings and putting the most interesting/credible ideas through to be shortlisted. Whilst being looked after by the lovely Leaders Award and GKN teams.

Every year grading participants really enjoy the experience and leave feeling inspired and intrigued by ideas such as, solar powered blankets or a variable light braking system on cars.

When: Thursday 6th April – drop in sessions – come along whenever suits you

Location: GKN Aerospace Global Technology Centre, Taurus Road, Patchway, Bristol, Patchway, England – BS34 6FB

Contact:  sign up here – as the team would like to know how many people to expect

You can see the Leaders Award process below – all starting with the challenge “If you were an engineer, what would you do?” Step 6 – grading is where you would be helping out.

Something inspirational from last year’s event

For engineer Darren Kewley, from the MOD, he returns year after year to these grading days to hear the stories.”I think my favourite part is seeing their personal stories come through – the real world problems they face and seeing them apply engineering to fix those problems.”

One example that particularly struck him – “One child explained how their Gran was in hospital and it broke their heart to see the problems she was facing. They explained in the letter that they hadn’t known what to do, but after hearing about this competition, realised that engineering could help.”

The kids taking part in this competition have got it – Engineering solves problems and can help make the world a better place!

Please come along to help the children taking part in this project!

Local secondary pupils visit UWE to discuss sustainability and green skills

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UWE’s School of Engineering recently welcomed 80 young people from a local secondary school to discuss the challenges faced to reach net-zero by 2030, and the green skills and solutions needed to overcome them.

Students from Bristol Brunel Academy engaged with several activities focussing on sustainability, including an interactive planetarium show, presenter-led workshops and an employer and careers fair. The day was hosted by UWE Bristol’s DETI Inspire team, and was a great success, with students coming away feeling more confident about climate action, and more knowledgeable about the green skills required to enter the sustainable future when they leave school.

The Eco-day formed part of the Inspire Sustainability project, funded as part of the Green Futures project from the West of England Combined Authority. Through meeting all our real life role models working on sustainability solutions, it’s hoped young people will gain a greater awareness of the diverse green jobs available in the West.

The ‘We Make Our Future’ planetarium show

During the day, the students had the opportunity to be a part of a fully interactive presenter-led planetarium show, from science communicators ‘Explorer Dome’. In the show, named ‘We Make Our Future’, the students were taken on a journey through human engineering, from Stonehenge, to space travel, before being challenged to consider engineering’s role in finding solutions to the climate crisis.

DETI Inspire team delivering sustainable solutions workshop at UWE

The students also took art in workshops from the DETI Inspire team, debating targets for net-zero, including UWE’s own energy targets, all by the year 2030. Then the students discussed the different solutions to the challenges faced when reaching for those targets. Such as insulating new homes and retrofitting older ones, city planning focussing on low-carbon transport, ways to hold their schools to account for their eco-choices, and the many green skills and careers that would come from the push for net-zero.

To learn more about the sessions, the plans for future Eco-weeks, and to book the DETI Inspire team for future STEM and sustainability outreach, please contact the team at the engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk inbox. You can also download the lesson plans and materials from the sessions at the link below: https://www.digitaltrailblazers.net/resources

Over 1200 students discuss solutions and skills to reach net-zero in School Eco-Week events

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Three secondary schools in the West have recently held Inspire Sustainability Eco-Weeks, with their students learning about the challenges that we face in order to reach net-zero by 2030, and the green skills and solutions needed in order to overcome them.

Bristol Brunel Academy, Digitech Studio School and Hans Price Academy have held events including career stands with prospective employers from the area, where students challenged them on their green credentials; sessions from the DETI Inspire team debating sustainable solutions from real engineers in the area; and interactive hook-a-duck stands encouraging students to identify their own green skills and apply them to the net-zero challenge.

The Eco Weeks form part of the Inspire Sustainability project, funded as part of the Green Futures project from the West of England Combined Authority. Through meeting all our real life role models working on sustainability solutions, it’s hoped young people will gain a greater awareness of the diverse green jobs available in the West.

In the DETI Inspire sessions, students debated targets for net-zero, including lowering waste by 65%, and Bristol City Council’s promise to reduce traffic by 40%, all by the year 2030. Then the students of various age groups, discussed the different solutions to the challenges faced when reaching for those targets. Such as insulating new homes and retrofitting older ones, city planning focussing on low-carbon transport, ways to hold their schools to account for their eco-choices, and the many green skills and careers that would come from the push for net-zero.

Across the week, the DETI Inspire team delivered a whole-school assembly, multiple live school online broadcasts tuned into by whole year groups, 15 fully facilitated sessions, and hosted an employer careers fair.

In total the team directly delivered to over 1200 young people, with future events and engagements also being planned. Many of the students reached have formed school eco-clubs, where they work together with the school to become more sustainable. Many of the students have taken inspiration from the sessions, and brought real solutions for sustainability to the school’s leadership. It’s really great to see that the students are turning to climate action and developing their green skills, and actively making a difference in their school.

To learn more about the sessions, the plans for future Eco-weeks, and to book the DETI Inspire team for future STEM and sustainability outreach, please contact the team at the engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk inbox. You can also download the lesson plans and materials from the sessions at the link below: https://www.digitaltrailblazers.net/resources

Women in Engineering Mentoring & Outreach Programme – get involved now!

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‘Women Like Me’ is a peer mentoring and outreach project in the Bristol and Bath area aimed at boosting female representation at all levels in engineering. Senior women engineers are paired with junior women engineers and their mentoring journeys supported through various events. At the same time training and opportunities are provided for junior engineers to undertake engineering education outreach in local schools. 

The programme has run with great success since 2018, and for 2023 we’re excited to be adding a new element to our mentoring support package! 

In addition to our face-to-face networking and training events, this year we will be providing online mentoring support. Alexandra Knight, an award-winning engineer and presenter, who empowers women in STEM to be confident visible role models through her company STEMazing, will be heading up these online sessions, with particular emphasis on developing our Senior Engineers’ mentoring skills. 

Who can take part?

If you have 5 years (or more) experience working in engineering – you’re a Senior Woman Engineer! – please sign up to be a Mentor here.

Junior women engineers are those with less experience than this, and can include apprentices, trainees, undergraduate and postgraduate students and postdoctoral researchers – with less than 5 years experience in engineering. Please sign up to be a Mentee here.

Date for the diary!

Please sign up in January, as we’ll collect all enrolments and pair you up mentor-to-mentee in early February before our kick off event on 23rd Feb…

Women Like Me – 23rd February, 4 – 6pm at UWE Bristol (Frenchay campus in Filton).

This event will introduce you to the Women Like Me programme, with some top tips and discussion about mentoring and outreach. And hopefully include getting to meet your new mentee/mentor for the first time (!) as well as the rest of this years cohort. 

Those are the core details, but if you’d like to find out more about the programme – including why we think women mentoring is important, more detailed plans for this year, expectations from mentor/mentees, past successes etc – please read below.

Why is this important?

Only 12% of engineers in the UK are women. In order to support female engineers, more girls need to connect with engineering as a career, with positive female role models, and more women need to be supported to make a difference in the workplace.

Women Like Me is addressing this by pairing together women engineers to provide career and public engagement mentoring. Participating engineers deliver engineering engagement activities in local schools and at local public events, providing positive role models for young girls. Through this approach, the project impacts the workplace today and the future of the engineering profession.

What will it involve?

Introductions – We offer various networking and training opportunities to all participants, this year the first session will be held face-to-face on 23rd Feb.

Goal setting – On 9th March, there’ll be an online goal setting session for mentors and mentees. Alexandra Knight (from STEMazing) will lead mentoring pairs through focused discussions to get their mentoring relationships off to a great start.

Mentor only coaching – This year will be a great opportunity for mentors to develop themselves as well as their mentees, with Alex leading four subsequent online ‘mentoring circle’ meetings for mentoring coaching and peer support. These sessions will be spread throughout the year and will be private sessions for mentors-only.

Mentoring meet-ups – We expect mentors and mentees to meet at least twice during the year – although we’d encourage more, if that’s possible for both parties. These meetings or conversations can take whatever form best suits each pair – something to discuss in your initial meetings in Feb/March.

Mentees public engagement – Junior engineers will receive training in public engagement (Senior Engineers can also take part!) and we ask them to then undertake at least three engineering outreach activities with local schools and public events. Coordination of activity is provided and supported by UWE – we’ll send you opportunities over email and support you in these sessions.

Log your activities – we then ask mentors to log their mentoring meet-ups, and the mentees to log their public engagement – this helps us to track how the programme is going.

More Women Like Me Info

This project was first launched in 2018 and is based in the Science Communication Unit and School of Engineering at UWE Bristol. The project is organised by Dr Louisa Cockbill and Ana Bristow, and was initiated by Dr Laura Fogg Rogers and Dr Laura Hobbs. It is supported by the initiative for Digital Engineering Technology & Innovation (DETI).

You can read about the successes of the project in previous years and access the 2018-2019 project report. A paper in the Journal of Science Communication, Fogg-Rogers and Hobbs (2019) places Women Like Me in the context of recruitment and retention of women in engineering.

For any further information please email engineeringourfuture@uwe.ac.uk or follow us on Twitter for updates.

How do I sign up?

If you’ve not already done this on the links above, here they are again! To take part in the project this year, interested participants should complete the appropriate online survey:

Senior Engineers (over 5 years experience) please complete this survey

Junior Engineers (less than 5 years experience) please complete this survey

The project coordinators will then be in touch in February to introduce you to your mentor/mentee.

UWE and Aerospace Bristol host local schools for a free STEM day trip!

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The DETI Inspire team at UWE Bristol are collaborating with Air League, the UK’s leading aviation and aerospace charity, who are generously supporting the free delivery of Aerospace Engineering days out for 16 classes from schools in the South West. So far, 243 kids have experienced Bristol’s excellent aviation history at Aerospace Bristol, before streaming into UWE’s new School of Engineering building to explore the future of sustainable flight using a virtual gaming platform.

This new scheme is part of Air League’s continuing mission to inspire young people to pursue a career in aviation. They’ve been able to offer this amazing opportunity for local schools by partnering up with Aston Martin Bristol, who are funding the delivery of Air League’s Inspired Engineering initiative for 2022. This funding has enabled Air League to offer the free day out, as they are paying for transportation costs, entry into Aerospace Bristol and a bespoke workshop at UWE Bristol, all at no cost to the schools.

Throughout the day, different careers relating to the aerospace industry are discussed to give students a flavour of what a future career could look like. The goal is to inspire children from all different backgrounds to start thinking about careers in STEM, particularly engineering, and give them an idea of the future roles they can hold. The initiative also aims to emphasise the green skills that they will need in the sustainable workforce of the future.

Josh Warren from the DETI Inspire running an AirLeague funded Minecraft session on the future of flight in UWE Engineering’s dedicated outreach classroom

The DETI Inspire team used their regional links to recruit  primary schools to the programme, with Air League organising all transportation for classes, including the transfer between Aerospace Bristol and UWE Bristol’s Frenchay campus halfway through the day. Coach costs often prohibit schools from arranging trips out for their pupils, even to relatively local educational destinations, so this funding has been really appreciated by schools, particularly those from areas of socio-economic deprivation who have been a priority to secure sessions for.

Each trip begins with a visit to Aerospace Bristol to explore the history of air travel and aerospace design. The children get to explore the amazing exhibits, with a frequently reported favourite being a tour inside a Concorde aircraft!

This is then followed by a visit to UWE’s School of Engineering, where students explore the future of flight on the popular game, Minecraft. The kids enter the virtual Filton runway, built by DETI Inspire collaborator Atkins, where they are encouraged to let their imaginations run wild to think up ways in which air travel can become more sustainable.

The young people have used Minecraft to digitally engineer biofuel stations for planes, where the crops used are grown on site; as well as prototypes for solar powered planes and flying electric cars!

The programme has been extremely popular, with every session booked out by mid-October. While the children’s enthusiasm speaks for itself throughout the day, there’s also been fantastic feedback from teachers:

“We would like to say a huge thank you for this opportunity. It was a fantastic day and the children were really excited by all that they got to do!”


“Overall, a fantastic opportunity for the children and one they would not get often.”

We have received a lot of enquiries from schools who would love to participate in our aerospace days out, so we are hoping to continue this initiative into 2023 to reach more students in the South West and inspire them into careers in STEM.

DETI Inspire use the West in Minecraft and subsequent worlds developed with the support of Atkins, a member of the SNC-Lavalin Group, and Science Hunters through Building to Break Barriers (funded by a Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious grant)

Join Us at our Green Skills Fayres in the South West!

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What are Green Skills Fayres?

The Inspire Sustainability team at UWE Engineering have organised several Green Skills Fayres to take place at three schools in the South West on the 24th and 30th of November, and 2nd of December. We are looking for people working in green jobs to join us in inspiring secondary school-aged students (11-16) at Hans Price Academy in Weston-Super-Mare, Bristol Brunel Academy in Speedwell, and Digitech Studio School in Warmley. We want to inspire young people to develop green skills that they can take with them into their future careers.

What are the Green Skills Fayres?

Anyone in a green job will have the opportunity to discuss how your work contributes to sustainability, the green skills that you’ve developed, and how you apply these to your job. You will be provided with a table to display items relevant to your job to engage young people and spark conversations. STEM ambassadors are also encouraged to bring along any promotional material and invite students to visit your place of work in future if possible. Afterwards, groups of students will have the opportunity to share the green skills and careers that most interest them and how they could develop these.

Read more here: Inspire young people at a Green Skills Fayre – Graphic Science

Woman writing the word career on a wall while standing on a step containing educational graphics.

We are particularly interested in hearing from people who either work in the fields of or have green skills related to climate science, decarbonisation, and climate adaptation. Green skills are skills that are needed to support a sustainable society and are, therefore, broad. These could include skills relating to research, technical aspects, operational management, and monitoring, as well as soft skills, such as creativity and resilience.

If you would like to get involved in the Green Skills Fayre, then please click the button below and fill in the form to register your interest!

How can we support young people to develop green skills?

Prior to the fayres, we will be leading assemblies for young people to get them to consider what green skills they could develop from the subjects they are studying at school, and how they might apply them in different jobs to help the West of England reach its goal of net zero carbon emissions.

We will also be providing workshops that tie-in to the Green Skills Fayres and allow young people to have a go at digital engineering, scientific research, undertaking a green audit of their school, establishing an eco committee, debating sustainability topics, and developing creative communication campaigns.

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