Science Night! At Cheylesmore Community Centre
On Thursday 19th February, Resonate headed to Cheylesmore Community Centre for Science Night!, an evening of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM)-filled fun for 11-17 year olds.
This isn’t the first time we’ve collaborated with Cheylesmore Community Centre. Back in 2022, we took over the main hall for an evening for a Games Night focusing on mental health. We thought it was about time we headed back and made things even BIGGER. This time round, we took over 3 halls within the centre and welcomed 145 attendees.
As well as working with Cheylesmore Community Centre to make sure this event was offering exactly what the audience wanted, we worked collaboratively with the University of Warwick’s Interdisciplinary Research Spotlights. There are six Research Spotlights: Behaviour; Business, Manufacturing & Innovation; Digital, Data Science & AI; Health; Society & Culture; Sustainability. Researchers from across the University come together to tackle important topics within these themes. We wanted attendees to Science Night! to engage with some of the most important topics being researched at the University, so we ensured all activity related to at least one of these key research areas.
Visitors interested in Physics headed to the Orbital Enemies video game with Dr Andy Buchan to learn about the power of black holes and tried Carving Ice with Diamonds with PhD student Callum Hunter and colleagues – do you think diamonds are better or worse than metal at cutting through ice? We were also incredibly excited to venture inside the University of Warwick Mobile Planetarium to learn about space.
Some of the young people at Science Night! told us they were interested in a career in medicine, so they may particularly have enjoyed trying out the ECG and EMG machines at We Are Electric with Dr Dawn Collins and colleagues or Basic Life Support Training with RMD Society. We also learnt about Using Genetics of Flies to Understand Human Health with Dr Sophie Theis. We had a go at Building Our Own Phages (tiny viruses that can infect and kill bacteria) with Dr Jessica Lewis whilst we discovered how they work, where we find them and what we use them for! We had great fun Blasting Away Biofilms with PhD student Rowan-Lee Ball.
Did you know that Psychology is a science? We did some interactive neuroscience at Inside your Head: Brain, Behaviour and You withPhD student Sarwang Dwivedi and explored the Science of Collectors and their Collecting with PhD student Tom White. We also asked the question ‘How Does Seating Arrangement Influence Cooperation? with Dr Olga Feher, with some very interesting results!
The engineering fans amongst us chatted to Warwick Manufacturing Group to see machines in action, observe the properties of objects around us, explore how we can change how materials behave, move, or feel, and create energy with our own bare hands. Then we learnt about Computational Modelling with the team from the Centre for Doctoral Training within the School of Engineering.
We couldn’t run an event about STEM in 2026 without exploring Artificial Intelligence. We were joined by the team from Warwick’s AI Society to learn all AI in the Creative Arts: Making Art with Machines. Once member of the Resonate team had great fun creating an image of a princess doing a bungee jump!
Video game enthusiasts had a go at various games on offer from Warwick E-Sports, including the Sustainability focused City Skylines.
As this event was for 11-17 year olds, we were also delighted to be joined by Warwick’s Widening Participation Team who were letting attendees know about pre-university opportunities offered at the University of Warwick, alongside information on funding and how to apply to Warwick. We also had team members from Warwick Report & Support with Living and Studying Successfully with Others, where we learnt about managing conflict in friendships and relationships, how to deal with difficult conversations and self management.
It was a busy night and we had a wonderful time! Thank you very much to Cheylesmore Community Centre for hosting us and to everyone that attended on the night!