Festival to springboard youth to scientific future
From experimenting with the latest virtual reality technology, to painting with glowing bugs and ‘‘holding stardust in your hand’’, a dynamic Nelson event aims to give children and young adults an insight into the fast-evolving world of science and technology, and their place in it.
Some of the country’s leaders in fields as diverse as quantum physics, cybercrime, and icecream-making will converge on the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology (NMIT) campus in Nelson for the Ideas Festival next month, to share their expertise and enthusiasm through a choice of workshops and discussions.
The festival has evolved from the annual Inspire Conference, with the first two days set aside for primary and intermediate students, but with a third day now included for 16-24 year olds.
Not content with simply inspiring students to learn, Ideas Festival directors Leanne Pressman and Caroline Hoar from the charity Ingenious Educational Xperiences (iex), hoped the inaugural event would help young people think creatively about their future.
‘‘So many kids are now told the job you’re going to do doesn’t exist yet, and that’s a really disabling thing to be told as a young person. So it builds a confidence that the future, the next 10 years, what it could look like, and where you could fit into that,’’ Hoar said,
The pair felt as if there was hardly a university in the country they hadn’t been in touch with on their quest to find people who could make topics exciting for young people, by using the concept of the STEAM movement, which uses art to explore science, technology, engineering, and maths.
Those professionals would pitch their topics differently according to the age of the young people they were with, said Hoar, who used microbiologists from the Superbugs Lab at the University of Auckland as an example.
‘‘With our youth [16-24 year olds] they will be talking about a career in superbugs and what they think might happen in the next 10 years.
‘‘And then with the younger kids ... they’re going to paint with a bioluminescent bacteria. It’s like invisible ink, you can’t see what you’ve painted until the next day, when the bacteria glow.’’
The intermediate group of Year 7-8 children would carry out the activities as well, Pressman said. ‘‘But they’re also talking about some of the theories and challenges, like how do you take this fun thing and actually apply it to useful science, like attaching the glowing bits to viruses so that you can trace where they go and how they spread.’’
Nelson College for Girls teacher Sarah Johns, recent winner of the Prime Minister’s Science Teacher Prize award, was due to help a group of students run a session about hearts.
For the older students, ‘‘shark woman’’, marine biologist Melissa Ma´rquez, would discuss the complexities of being a woman in a male-dominated world.
And Meg Spriggs from the Neurological Foundation would run a session on how you recognise alzheimers and what the triggers are.
The festival directors hoped the event would change young people’s lives in the region.
‘‘It’s to show them not even how to walk through the door of opportunity, but that the door is even there,’’ Pressman said.
‘‘Sometimes that’s a little bit harder to see when you’re in a small town ... it is to get them thinking really creatively, now, about their future."
Local businesses had helped fund scholarships for some pupils to cover the cost of their tickets, while the event had been set up with the backing of three Nelson sponsors.
The festival takes place on April 11-13, with a free community night on April 12.
There are about 250 spaces for each event, with tickets available online from 6pm on Monday March 19. Visit www.if.org.nz for more information.