A stage show encouraging children to consider a career in science, technology, engineering or maths (STEM) has won a WorldSkills UK Diversity and Inclusion Heroes Award 2020.
Delivered to children throughout the UK with the help of the Girls’ Schools Association (GSA), See Me is an interactive, curriculum-linked production detailing groundbreaking contributions to STEM, with live experiments.
It was created by Siemens and BBC science presenter Fran Scott, known for children’s programmes including Newsround, How to Be Epic at Everything and the BAFTA-nominated Absolute Genius with Dick and Dom.
See Me was first launched as See Women on International Women’s Day 2016. Since then, around 4,000 young people from state and independent schools have been reached by the project. The project celebrates diversity within the STEM community and explores some of the perceived barriers to pursuing a career in the field.
An impact evaluation revealed that 78% of girls who have seen show felt inspired to find out more about STEM careers.
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The triumph at the WorldSkill UK awards follows its 2019 STEM Inspiration Award for outstanding contribution for widening participation, diversity and inclusion in STEM.
“See Me is an engaging, impactful partnership, and the Girls’ Schools Association is proud to play our part in delivering such a powerful message to children in state and independent schools across the country,” said GSA chief executive Donna Stevens.
“Science presenter Fran Scott tells the students in the audience how she discovered there was such a job as a pyrotechnician – imagine, getting paid to make safe explosions! – and how she went on to create her job as a science presenter. She mixes whizz-bang experiments with eye-opening nuggets of information from engineers from all kinds of backgrounds solving all kinds of problems.
“This is exactly the kind of fun, myth-busting energy that makes young people sit up and take notice.”
Listen to Fran Scott talk about the project here.
