We got an email the other day from the Science and Industry Museum. They were reaching out to see if there’s a possibility of working together during their February half-term programme.
The theme for their programme is ‘Play’ (linking to the 20th anniversary of the discovery of Graphene)
They don’t have any fixed ideas about how we might work together - but it might be that a few members go over to the Science Museum and lead a short activity or demonstrate some of our own work. They said they can potentially ship over some of our equipment too (e.g. 3d printers)
They also have the budget available for paying for members’ time, expenses and materials - But I’m currently waiting to hear back about how much that would be.
Would this be of interest to anyone? Or has anyone got any cool ideas of little workshops we could run/ things we could show off?
Just to say that events at MOSI are so much fun, and they’re a joy to work with. It would be great to take part somehow.
Half term tends to be a week right so I’m guessing it would be during “working hours”?
In the past we taught people to solder with our custom designed badges/necklaces, but the theme of play could involve us making something that is educational - maybe a building blocks game teaching Boolean logic (e.g. glowing blocks where placing an AND block on top of two “ON” blocks makes the block above light up)
It could even be as simple as sharing the joy of making, trying things out etc.
Paper circuits are fun as we can print some designs, provide copper tape, coin cells, and LEDs and let people make a circuit that actually works which sticks to paper.
It could be we make something where people make a circuit on a small section of card (with guidelines on where power comes in and should go out) then add it to a wall and it builds up to make a huge wall of blinky LEDs that people have made
Ahh awesome! I’m glad to hear they were fun to work with!!
I assume it would be working hours - in their email, they said: “Given the different boroughs we serve are on half term at different times, the programme lasts from 10th to 25th Feb but activities don’t have to last for the full time! An afternoon or morning would be fine.”
I love all your ideas! They sound really fun, especially the big blinky LED wall - that would be so cute We might be able to run a few different workshops if we could get enough members who want to help out.
I like to second what Cone has said. I’ve helped out with MOSI before as part of HacMan and it’s been really fun as well.
In addition to badges, we’ve done hebocon which went down really well. (Although trying to get kids to destory their bots just after they made them )
I think in most cases it does require a few of us there, even for stuff like soldering workshops.
It seems like they are giving us the flexibility to just do a morning or afternoon, so that would help with us getting the numbers we need and we do have members who don’t work traditional work hours.
If you need a volunteer then I’m in.
They’d like a rough outline of the activity by early/mid-December so it could be included in our initial comms. The logistics could be fleshed out afterwards but we’d need plans in place for early Jan so they can sign everything off on their side.
They’re looking at creating a kind of ‘Science at Play’ area where we can invite organisations in to run tabletop-style activities or demos.
The middle weekend of the half-term (17th and 18th) might be a good time to look at something.
Budget-wise, they said they could look at covering a couple of people’s time for each day, any materials and transport costs to get any materials/equipment/people to and from the site. We’d also have the support of our Explainer team to help with facilitation.
They have quite a back-stock of materials so might be able to supplement some things depending on what we’re interested in delivering.
For the MOSI thing we could do a giant version of this perhaps
I’m just suggesting things I think would be achievable, fun to make, and probably something I’d have found interesting when I was a sprog, so I could be way off the mark
Hi!
i have found this post in the right moment, as I was thinking on contacting MOSI for organising something there. The deadline that has been mentioned for proposing ideas is almost here, so I propose to have a meeting at the Hackspace with the members who want to be involved and see what our proposal would be. How Sunday 3rd sounds for you? There might still be some tasks to finish from the Hack the Space day, so I suppose members would be around.
I am flexible with times if it is before 6pm. Shall we say 4pm there?
Hey Paula! Cool that you were already planning something! What was your idea?
Unfortunately I’m not sure if I’ll be able to make the sunday as myself and a few other members are going to the cakebread studio sale and I’m not sure what time that will wrap up! I will be about this evening and all day during the hack the space day if you’d like to chat in person though.
Hi!
I have organised quite a lot of workshops that we can use as ideas: making creatures with circuits, exploring algorithms, programming robots, creating our own robots, escape rooms about cybersecurity and digital footprint, programming videogames,…and more things.
There are also some ideas that I want to explore and it would make sense to link the sessions to the Graphene somehow. It’d be good to have some more information about which materials they have at the museum and how many sessions they want us to organise.
About meeting, sadly I am going to miss most of the Hack the Space day, but I’ll be there 7:30pm and I’ll ask for you. Anyone else joining @Cone , @Harvinder_Atwal ?
Unfortunately I won’t be around this weekend.
I’m happy to help out with logistics and on the day itself but I don’t have the availability to help with planning and ideas, etc.
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