On the 12th March, Dr Ella Rimmer, a postdoc in IMBE who is also a girl guides leader, organised an event for Brownies and Guides in south London. We spoke to Ella about her experience with the event.
Who was the event for?
The event was for girls who attend Brownies, Guides or Rangers in Streatham, South West London, aged 7-17. We had just over 80 girls in attendance.
The aim of the event was to give these girls a space to experience, learn about and enjoy STEM based activities. The Girls’ Attitudes Survey 2021 saw that 57% of Girlguiding young members thought STEM was for only for boys.
As a secondary aim, I wanted to expose Girlguiding leaders to the idea of running STEM based activities, in the hope of improving the offer given to girls in the area on a regular basis.
What did you do?
We hosted a full day of stall-based activities, where each stall had a different activity from a different area in STEM. Each activity lasted around 10-20 minutes, and was generally quite hands on, though there were some demonstrations as well. Often stalls had a craft element, as we know these are very popular.
What worked well?
Having lots of different spaces worked very well (two halls and an outside space). This meant when something went wrong we could clear a room for a short period and allow the issue to be dealt with.
Having a mix of external helpers and Girlguiding helpers was also really nice – I think the mix allowed both sides to really “see” and understand the other, from an adult point of view. From control of the event, I think it also worked well to have scientists around for questions but also Girlguiding volunteers to manage first aid and organisation.
Photo consent lanyards worked very well for the most part, making it easy to know who could be photographed for event recording.
The more crafty activities (slime making, tie dye chromatography) were very popular with all ages present. The oldest girls really appreciated the careers stall and being able to help out a bit more generally.
What would you change for next time?
I would like to implement an order to the activities — the epidemiology stalls had an order for girls had to follow with a strict time limit, and I think there would have been less of a hold up at certain stalls had this happened.
Will you be doing more engagement with the group in the future?
Absolutely, I plan on running smaller sessions on my own with groups of about 20 girls (those who missed out on the big day) but will hopefully be able to organise another large-scale event soon. We had quite a lot of interest from parents asking if the siblings of attendees could come, so there would be potential to expand there too.