Over the last few months, we have been working with University of Bristol Engineering and Bristol Composites Institute, to deliver our co-created programme, Discover Composites!
The aim of the programme is to spark curiosity in young people from various hard-to-reach communities across Bristol and inspire the next generation of composite engineers. The programme has been directly ran from our Youth Club On Wheels!
As a result of this programme, the NextCOMP team are working on a "workshop in a box". This will include a range of activities and guidance documents, which can be delivered to young people by non-technical specialists! The team have created the box to be accessible to every environment while still making sure it is interesting.
We hope the "workshop in a box" can be delivered across our Community Youth Clubs and other youth groups across Bristol.
"Working with Young Bristol has been inspiring. I have learnt so much and continue to learn. The most important lesson is that there are plenty of budding composite engineers out there, we just need to find the funds and novel ways to get materials and engineering out into the community."
Richard Trask, Professor
From the programme, we have tried and tested a number of different activities to help create the "workshop in a box", including:
- Composite tug of war, with chocolate and jelly laces.
- Crush the egg.
- Creating strong composites with jelly and spaghetti and crushing them with the NextCOMP.
- Composite card snap.
- Making paper shapes and testing their strength.
It has been great to work with University of Bristol, Engineering to inspire the next generation of engineers. Thank you for joining us deliver on our mobile! We would also like to thanks FUTURES for funding the programme!
Find out more about our programmes here!
