Once the grant’s ended..

We’ve been having quite a few chats about sustainability over here with some of our friends in the engagement world (quick flag – therefore some of the points made in this post are shamelessly stolen). As a funder we see lots of great projects being developed and delivered, only to disappear once their funding’s run out. This is pretty common in public engagement but is there a better way?

Engagement projects are always on the lookout for new pots of money and it’s inevitable that good ideas, even if they’ve been run before, won’t always get funded. If the emphasis is on finding new and innovative engagement ideas, tried and tested methods may fall by the wayside, despite being great ways to engage with the public and improve engineers’ (and scientists’) public engagement skills.

For practitioners wishing to continue an activity, reapplying for grants is one way to carry on. However for projects to continue in the long term there needs to be alignment between the funder’s and practitioner’s goals. So what other ways are available to achieve sustainability? Depending on the activity in question, moving to a paid model (if it’s a show for example) could work, especially if development is the most costly part of the process. Science Museum Live for example has been launched thanks to dedicated investment from the Science Museum while Imperial’s Reach Out Lab and Bristol ChemLabs – both self-financing through income from schools – relied on capital investment to kick them off.

As long as there’s audience demand, running costs can be met by this method, but this won’t hold for all types of project. A different model may be to secure multiple funding streams. For example science festivals such as Cheltenham rely on grants, donations, ticket sales and corporate sponsors. However arguably, even with multiple funders, programmes still have to be refined and reviewed every year as the funding behind them changes.

Could funders do something to change this situation? Or do we even want this to change? While short term funding has its downsides, it can act as the public engagement community’s version of quality control. Practices and technologies change rapidly and longer-term funding could give rise to projects that become out of date quickly, if they aren’t regularly reviewed and updated.

On a final note – is sustainability even necessary to achieve? How many projects genuinely have a lifespan longer than four years? Perhaps, we should be thinking more in terms of long term relationships rather than long term activities?

Thoughts, disagreements and experiences on the topic would be much appreciated! And stay tuned for more discussions on the topic later on this year.

Going with the ~Flow

You may or may not have heard that we’ve recently funded a brand new batch of projects who are all planning to engage the public with the fabulous world of engineering.

Among these projects is ~Flow, a floating water mill on the River Tyne.

~Flow is basically a little floating wooden house, powered by a big water wheel on one side. Inside however are a whole host of imaginative instruments which create sounds and music, in response to the changing river environment. As an example, the pitch of the ‘Salinity Sampler Sequencer’ instrument (see right) changes depending on salt levels, which affects the conductivity of the water.

~Flow is led by Ed Carter, who I had the pleasure of meeting when I took a trip up to Newcastle this week. As part of the UK’s Cultural Olympiad, ~Flow, already has a pretty extensive engagement programme, but now thanks to Ingenious they’re going to be extending this so their visitors can find out more about the great engineering that’s gone into the project, and how those engineers have combined their expertise with artists and architects to create the inter-collaborative experience that is ~Flow.

If you fancy having a look at ~Flow yourself, it’s open to the public (for free) until September, or if you’re unable to make it to NewcastleGateshead, you can also listen to it online over at the Flowmill website.

Where are all the engineers?

I have to admit that I’m a bit of a newbie to engineering engagement. Like many of us in the engagement business I’ve come from a background of science communication, and at first I assumed that engineering engagement would be more or less the same just with a different subject area.

But I’ve found that this is not quite true. While today public engagement seems to be fairly well embedded in science, this is taking longer to develop in the engineering community. But why is this the case?

Feedback from some of our past Ingenious projects suggests that the impetus for engineers to take part in engagement activities most often comes from the individual rather than the company. But on the whole engineers don’t realise the importance of public engagement or rate it very highly compared to their science counterparts. This means that engineers and, more specifically, those in management positions, are less likely to release staff for public engagement activities.

A lot of effort has gone into changing this view in academia, thanks to the Beacons and a host of other initiatives and schemes. But the majority of engineers work in industry, not academia. Last year the Academy released a report with the Department of Business, Innovation and Skills into the specific motivations, rewards and barriers to public engagement in STEM businesses. I won’t go into the minutia right now (you can read the full report here) but the bottom line is that for public engagement to be taken up by the business community, engagement goals must align with the business goals of the company. This could mean engagement falling under a business’ corporate social responsibility or recruitment activities for example. However it also means that transferring what we’ve learnt about public engagement in academia to those working in industry isn’t exactly straightforward.

Managers will be more likely to release their staff for engagement if they can see a tangible benefit for their company, whether it’s increasing awareness of their brand or improving relations with the local community. Carrying out engagement activities and training outside of work hours and being as flexible as possible is also a definite plus when it comes to recruiting engineers into engagement.

But the lack of engineers isn’t all down to the academia-industry divide. Negative views are found in both academia and industry, so perhaps it’s a matter of branding? Many engagement and communication activities, such as FameLab or the British Science Association Media Fellowships, are open to both engineers and scientists but attract far fewer engineers than scientists. Both of these schemes explicitly welcome engineers but perhaps FameLab’s slogan of ‘Talking science’ or the British Science Association name, unintentionally discourage engineers from applying?

An argument could be made for running separate events especially for engineers – last year the British Science Association ran a strand of the Media Fellowship especially for engineers, and the very first I’m an Engineer Get Me Out of Here (sister to I’m a Scientist Get Me Out of Here) has just finished. However a number of activities successfully integrate science and engineering engagement without doing this. Bright Club, not only mixes science with engineering but also showcases the arts and humanities alongside STEM researchers. The Big Bang Fair is also heavy on the engineering content from both academia and industry, which it features alongside science research and activities. There are pros and cons with both approaches, but as a lot of science and engineering work overlaps, it doesn’t always make sense to split activities along discipline lines.

While engineering engagement still has a way to go before it catches up with engagement in science there are signs that it’s moving in the right direction. More and more public engagement practitioners are actively incorporating engineering into their activities, and we’re also receiving more applications from engineers and engineering companies who would like to develop activities themselves. While recruiting engineers still remains a problem, some of the schemes Ingenious has funded have been oversubscribed with engineers thanks to the training and opportunities they offer, and the flexibility they give to those fitting in engagement around a regular workload.  Some of the engineers who have taken part in Ingenious projects have told us that it’s even helped contribute towards attaining their chartered status. It’s taking time but the attitude towards public engagement is slowly changing. The question is how can we keep this momentum going?

I’m an Engineer: The view from the classroom

With over 1,000 questions and 60 live chats so far this year’s I’m an Engineer is well and truly underway. Running from 12 – 23 March, it’s an X Factor-style competition, where students quiz engineers online and get to vote for the ones they like best.

As the Royal Academy of Engineering are funding this first ever I’m an Engineer, I was lucky enough to be invited into a school to found out what the competition is like from the student’s perspective. And the class in question were a particularly bright group of year 9 girls who took no prisoners. As many engineering fields have quite obvious impacts on our daily lives, it wasn’t a surprise to see that this was the aspect which most interested the students. Cue lots of questions that quizzed the engineers on their moral stance on the defence industry – tough to answer any time let alone a Tuesday morning.

Given how fast and furious the chat was, it was a tough test of the communication skills of the engineers taking part. However the girls clearly appreciated the engineer’s replies, commenting afterwards that although they might not agree with all of their views, those who had taken the time to take on board their comments and engage in real discussions would be getting their vote.

Outside the live chat rooms there’s been a wealth of questions posed to the engineers across all zones, giving an insight into their lives both in and outside of work. And like its sister event I’m a Scientist, the students’ questions often take engineers down unexpected routes. Favourites so far include ‘Could you invent a moon lift?’,  ‘Have you ever fallen in the Thames?’ and of course, ‘Do you blow up stuff?’

Tips from awardees

Here at the Academy, we ask our awardees what advice they’d like to share with others, when their project has come to an end. As projects are often very different to each other, tips range from the practical to the vague, and can either be very specific or much broader in scope.

While not all advice will be relevant for every project, it’s always good to learn from others so, here’s a rundown of our top tips from our projects just gone:

• Try giving newly-trained engineers opportunities to put what they’ve learnt into practice straight away.
• Meeting other science communicators and seeing other types of public engagement first-hand can provide valuable inspiration to engineers who are just starting out in public engagement.
• Diversity is good. Try including engineers from a variety of backgrounds, for example both industry and academia in your plans.
• Working with multiple partners is challenging, but can help to achieve more than you could on your own. Successful partnerships require good planning, regular contact and compromise.
• Recruiting engineers is hard on short timescales. It’s even harder in the summer months of June to August.
• Artistic outputs take time!
• Try to have an achievable goal for engineers to work towards – a film for example.
• Be flexible to engineers’ time.
• Peer support is good.
• Little extras such as free buses can really help to get schools on board.

A bit of a mixture there then. For more top tips the British Science Association have a whole wealth of information from projects across engineering and science on their collective memory website.

Is recording engineering?

As well as funding public engagement activities through Ingenious we also offer Public Engagement Fellowships for individual researchers. The scheme is currently closed while we review just exactly we want the Fellowship to support (our very own engineering Brian Cox perhaps?) but that doesn’t mean our current Fellow has stopped too.

The man in question is Jez Wells who is an audio designer and engineer over at the University of York. Jez is trying to answer the question ‘Is recording engineering?’ and is looking at how similar the two disciplines actually are.

Jez is blogging all about his Fellowship findings on his blog (where he also gives a much better explanation of his work than I have). But if your interest has been piqued and you’re around York on Tuesday 28 February he’s also giving a talk at the University which you’re more than welcome to go along to.

Paperwork

I spent most of last week printing, collating and hole punching.

This isn’t because I work in a reprographic department, but because we’re in the midst of review season for our public engagement grant scheme Ingenious. I’m pretty new to this all (I only started at the Academy at the end of last year), but I’m told that I’ve actually had it quite easy. While in previous years every application to the scheme would be printed out multiple times, this year we’re also doing electronic versions – cutting down on both paper waste and paper cuts.

In any case by the time March arrives we’ll have 20 or so brand new engineering engagement projects funded by the Academy, and I’m pretty excited to find out what they will be. Over the last five years of Ingenious we’ve funded more than 50 projects which have each in their own way tried to get people involved in and excited about engineering, while also building up the communication skills of engineers.

I won’t attempt an exhaustive list right now but in the next few weeks or so I’ll be blogging about some of the projects we’ve got running so far. So if you’re an engineer you can find out the type of exciting stuff you can get involved in and if not, you can maybe pick up some ideas and inspiration. However in the meantime you can also find the list of funded projects from last year on the Ingenious website.