TechFest's STEM In The Park, sponsored by TAQA has been desgined to engage all ages in science activities that are done in parks by utilising teamwork, creativity and most of all having fun while learning.
Dates for upcoming events: summer of 2024
This project is sponsoder by
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Please enjoy our workshops commissioned by Caithness Science Festival.
A collaboration between Aberdeen Science Centre 
and TechFest, supported by the Institute of Physics (IOP), the ‘Space into Energy’ programme gives young people a glimpse into the inner workings of these exciting fields and how the skill sets required for each sector often overlap.
Featuring experts from each industry, participants will learn about innovation, teamwork and leadership through hands-on activities and interactive sessions, empowering them to discover their unique talents and how they can be the problem-solvers of the future.
We’re packing a whole range of activities into our programme with activities for all ages. From family days at Aberdeen Science Centre to interviews with industry professionals, there is something to inspire everyone.
The programme will be available to download very soon. Follow us on our social media channels for updates.
Sponsoring Space into Energy
We are thrilled to have a fantastic group of generous sponsors and supporters who are helping us bring the Space into Energy programme to as many young people across the North East of Scotland as possible.
If you’d like to join them, download our Space into Energy Sponsorship Proposal here for more information about how your business can benefit from getting involved.
Need more Space into Energy?
As the programme continues, we’ll be uploading informative resources here so that even if you can’t be at one of our events, you can still be a part of Space into Energy.
An Audience with an Astronaut
Watch this video of a conversation with astronauts Carl Walz and Mike Bloomfield, with commentary from Jim McNab from Oceaneering.
Click here for the rest of the series.
Listen to Space into Energy podcast series.
Sponsored and supported by
Click here to see our top picks!
For the full programme of events visit https://www.science03.org for more info
In partnership with the British Science Association, TechFest is working with schools to run a Machines of the Future Discovery Day event. TechFest will provide online teacher training to ensure that the participating teachers have everything they require to run the event in school. In addition, participating schools can apply for up to £500 funding to cover overhead costs (printing, paper, pens, etc.) and, as the project is sponsored by the British Science Association, each students Discovery Day CREST award will be paid for.
The Discovery Day project is aimed towards pupils from P6 up to S2.
This is a great project to introduce pupils at an early age to machine learning which is used in everyday life. The 5 hour project is made up of 3 workshops and includes a challenge where students get the opportunity to work in a group together to design a household product which uses machine learning.
1) Would you trust a machine? - students will sort out different potential machine learning jobs based on their usefulness and how much they would trust a machine to do the job.
2) Machine Learning now - students will look at video case studies, investigating how machine learning works in a real-life context, how different data and sourced are used in AI systems, and illustrating how these tools use machine learning.
3) Teach a Machine - in groups students experiment with machine learning using a range of different AI powered tools.
Challenge - Students will work in groups to research and plan to design a household product with the opportunity to present their work at the end of the Discovery Day.
Watch below a video of Professor Brian Cox explaining why this a great opportunity for schools to get involved with and to get a real feel for the project.
Disclaimer: Limited number of places available, applications not guaranteed.
For enquiries and how to sign up please contact Kirsty Cranna on email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
For more information visit the Machines of the Futures materials which are available on the CREST website.
Click here to enter TechFest's STEM Book Club.
Click here to view TechFest At Home page.
Check our ESP's website where they provide a list of free STEM activities to do at home.
Click here for CFE-linked, free and on-demand activities and resources to expand your knowledge in Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Mathematics.
Click here.
Download Ben Garrod's Activity Pack here.
Click here to see STEM learning resources you can use.
Click here for lots of girl guides adventures at home.
Or here for a Pinterest board full of STEM activities.
Click here to download your free education packs.
Click here.
Click here.
Dive in here.
Click here.
My name is Roseanne and I was the STEM lead organising Heroes of Tomorrow 2019. What a fantastic event it was! Heroes of Tomorrow is an event aimed at inspiring and informing school children age 12 – 13 that STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) is fun, engaging and there really is something for everyone. Thanks to our sponsors Equinor we were able to provide a bigger than ever Heroes of Tomorrow event with a variety of STEM related workshops and an awe inspiring show presented by the London Science Museum.
The most amazing part of the Heroes of Tomorrow event was seeing 12 – 13 year olds loving STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). ‘This doesn’t feel like a school day’ is my favourite pupil quote from the day. Another comment was pure and simple: ‘Amazing!’ Hearing these kind of comments made all the organisation and background work (believe me, there was more than you think) worth it!
When I was at school, I wasn’t the most academic and unfortunately there wasn’t the same focus on promoting STEM as there is now. Events like Heroes of Tomorrow are invaluable in demonstrating how STEM can play out in real life careers and why we bother to learn things like trigonometry or simultaneous equations. I went to art school after leaving school which was a great experience but after a couple of years I left without a degree realising it wasn’t the right path for me to take. I had always loved science and was a proper wildlife geek but having only got a C in Higher Biology I thought it wasn’t an option for me to study science at University. But I really wanted to! So I decided that’s what I was going to do. I worked in a pub for a year and studied really hard in order to get the grades I needed. I managed to get an A in Higher Biology and a B in Chemistry and then I gained a place studying Zoology at the University of Aberdeen. After 4 fascinating brilliant years I gained a first class degree, followed by a Masters and PhD in Evolutionary Biology.
With events like Heroes of Tomorrow, my hope is that young people can see the opportunities out there and be inspired to follow a career path that is right for them. Along with varied workshops and shows, Heroes of Tomorrow runs a career session at the end of the day with a varied selection of Industry Professionals. Some of these very successful people were straight A students but some of them failed all of their exams, one of them once got detention for having had too many detentions! Heroes of Tomorrow’s aim is to show our young people what is out there career wise, but also, if you fail, that’s ok! There are still opportunities and you can still be successful even if you do fail first time round.
So who are the Heroes of Tomorrow?
The Heroes of Tomorrow are our young people. 85% of jobs which will exist in 2030 haven’t even been invented yet. With advances in STEM who knows where we will be but what is certain is that our young people will have a massive role to play.
Here are some of the highlights of Heroes of Tomorrow:
Pupils visited the engineering labs driving remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) in the ROV pool, created waves in a wave tunnel and operated robotic arms to move blocks of wood and Equinor volunteers provided an extremely gneiss workshop exploring how oil and gas are extracted from different geological strata.
TechFest on board the Apollo 13 challenged pupils to embrace physics, using their problem solving skills and teamwork under time pressure to return astronauts safely back to earth with limited materials and there was further space exploration inside TechFest’s planetarium dome. CSI investigations were undertaken with Absafe figuring out who dunnit in a seemingly obvious car accident scenario.
There were a variety of presentations from Banchory Academy speaking about their dehydration project to Industry Professionals in the spotlight answering some very relevant questions during our Career Panel e.g. “How will Brexit affect your job?”
This year we had more than 350 attendees from 11 schools at our fifth Heroes of Tomorrow event. This was a record number of pupils attending but with almost 40 secondary schools across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire we can do better and we hope to accommodate more pupils in the future. For more information about Heroes of Tomorrow click here or if you want more information on TechFest events click here.
Feedback from both pupils and students:
‘Wow! This is great!” Student from Albyn School
‘Fantastic programme, don’t change what works’ Teacher from Banchory
‘Awesome’ Student from Kemnay Academy
