We did it! Funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering Ingenious Programme, we are proud to deliver Getting Engineers out there and On the Street! A £30K project, we’ve designed it carefully for engineers in any sector and discipline to receive free continuing professional development (CPD) to develop their public engagement skills.
Project partners are Tony Mullin of Communitask Ltd, Perry Walker, New Economics Foundation (nef) Fellow and Sharon Saunders of Stradia Ltd.
Public engagement is seen increasingly as the way to excite lay interest in engineering and the importance of its impact on our daily lives. Engineers must be graduates at any career stage, who live, study and/or working in the UK with little, if any public engagement experience.
Time commitment
- 3 hour briefing/training session 2-3 weeks before the public engagement event;
- Public engagement events of 3-4 hours;
- 1 5-a-side tournament focused on sports engineering;
- 4 Science on the Street pop-up events like market stalls in places like Crystal Peaks;
- 4 World Cafe events in a primary and secondary school, 6th Form College and FE college;
- 1 x Participative Workshop for senior engineering management – feedback & debriefing of previous events to find ways to develop more effective coaching and mentoring skills.
Engineers simply need to:
- turn up for their specific briefing/training session and related event;
- share their engineering design expertise with our participants;
- have fun as part of their public engagement training.
RAEI project terms and conditions preclude paying engineers to join our project because they will receive very significant in-kind professional training benefits carefully designed to ensure engineers develop basic public engagement skills.
More about this project
Getting engineers out there and on the street evolved out of Action for Involvement’s project report I Cant be an Engineer – I’m a Girl!. We found that the engineering profession has a very great deal of work with a long way to go to raise the profile and create a positive image of engineering in our target groups: Sheffield’s disadvantaged communities, young people, ethnic minorities and girls/women eg Sheffield’s Somali community as evidenced in our report.
We estimate that to deliver CPD training to this standard is likely to cost at least £500 per person for up to 8 engineering workshop participants at all career stages; it is an excellent opportunity for high level networking and potential for long term career development.
Action for Involvement is a Sheffield-based think tank which is committed to creating space to bring people in our communities together with high level policy makers and key stakeholders so that together we can explore ways to improve our communities.