Last week, the Ogden Kirkby Partnership celebrated their successful mission to explore the universe with an exhibition at the Kirkby Gallery showcasing work from 12 local primary schools.

Last year, using the 2021 World Space Week theme of Women in Space, the partnership invited schools to take part in a 2D art project to celebrate the women who have helped to make space exploration possible, and a 3D modelling project to allow children to create shuttles, landers and satellites.

There were over 1,000 entries across the partnership, and the mission culminated in a celebration event and exhibition, planned to coincide with the Gaia art installation which visited the town. (Gaia is a touring artwork by UK artist Luke Jerram. Measuring seven metres in diameter and created from 120dpi detailed NASA imagery of the Earth’s surface, the artwork provides the opportunity to see our planet, floating in three dimensions.)

“We had an unbelievable response to the event,” says Peter Biggs, partnership co-ordinator from hub school St Laurence’s Catholic Primary. “We’ve had every primary school in Kirkby talking about women and their role in space exploration, we had over 100 guests attend our celebration evening at the gallery where families and children talked to each other about their creations and took part in hands-on science activities.

“Science leads across the partnership have worked closely together, gender stereotypes within science have been broken, pupils and families have actively engaged with the project and it has allowed children to see that science is for everyone.

“As partnership co-ordinator and as a science lead, I’ve been blown away by the response to this project,” continues Peter. “It has been fantastic to see so many families across our community engaging and interacting in science activities, having scientific dialogue and working together to produce a truly wonderful exhibit. A large focus for us as part of our partnership is to drive the science capital of the children within our community and this event has truly done this in a memorable way.”

“It was absolutely brilliant to see the work that the children have been doing with their families showcased in the Kirkby Gallery,” agrees Ogden Programme Manager, Paul Sapple who attended the Kirkby Partnership celebration event. “To see so many families enjoying the event and participating in the roundtable activities that partnership colleagues had devised was really inspiring.”

“I know that setting up the event was a significant undertaking,” continues Paul. “However, it is fantastic to see what local schools can achieve when they work together, and it is a great example of an Ogden partnership in action! The event has really helped to raise the profile of physics within the partnership and definitely created a buzz. I look forward to seeing this partnership develop, inspiring the next generation of scientists and enthusing those who teach them.”

Want to find out more about this partnership event?

Read the full report from Peter which provides more detail. 

To start the partnership, we wanted to do something that hadn’t been done before as a group of Kirkby schools. Having run World Space Week homework projects before in my own school and had lots of success, I felt that this could be a really fun and engaging way to get our schools, children and families talking about science, space and physics.

With World Space Week in October we saw this as an opportunity to hit the ground running with a whole partnership project. World Space Week 2021’s theme of Women in Space was a fantastic topic to celebrate as it lends itself to looking at breaking stereotypes. With the launch of the James Webb telescope in the December, it also felt like a great topic to really look at the technology that has helped us explore the skies above us. With the pressures on schools to continue catch-up activities along with the added pressures of staff and pupil absence, we didn’t want to further cram the curriculum or add to teacher workload, so we felt a home learning/homework-based task would be more appropriate. We also hoped this would lead to increase pupil and family engagement.

We decided to run two events to allow children to be as creative as possible: a 2D art project to celebrate the women who have helped to make space exploration possible, and a 3D modelling project to allow children to create their own versions of some of the shuttles, landers and satellites that have let us explore the universe.

All 12 primary schools within our partnership bought into the idea, promoting and supporting the event. To encourage uptake of the project every child who submitted an entry was rewarded with a packet of sweets, whilst the top three entries in each category in each school also won astronaut ice-cream! An overall winner won a book linked to women in space. The prizes were funded through our Ogden Trust partnership grant.

Prior to launching the event, I contacted our local gallery, to see if we would be able to display the winning entries as an exhibition for the people of Kirkby to enjoy and to celebrate the work created by the children; we also thought this would be an added incentive to encourage uptake with our children and families. In addition to this, we found out the Gaia art installation was coming to Kirkby in February 2022, so we felt having a celebration evening and tying it in with a trip to view the Gaia, would make this event extra special.

We had an unbelievable response to the event, all 12 primary schools in our partnership took part with most schools having close to, if not over, 100 entries per school (over 1,000 entries across the partnership). As a result, we had 72 pieces of artwork linked to space on display at our celebration event.

I think as an event it has been fantastic, we’ve had every primary school in Kirkby talking about Women and their role in space exploration, something that wouldn’t have happened without this event. We had over 100 guests attend our celebration evening at the gallery where families and children, enjoyed food and drinks, talked to each other about their creations and took part in hands-on science activities such as the Ogden Phizzi practical: solar system in my pocket.

There have been a number of key benefits to running this project: science leads across the partnership have worked closely together, gender stereotypes within science have been broken, pupils and families who may not usually engage with science-based activities have actively engaged with the project and it has allowed children to see that science is for everyone.

As partnership co-ordinator and as a science lead, I’ve been blown away by the response. It has been fantastic to see so many families across our community engaging and interacting in science activities, having scientific dialogue and working together to produce a truly wonderful exhibit. A large focus for us as part of our partnership is to drive the science capital of the children within our community and this event has truly done this in a memorable way.

The Ogden Kirkby Partnership, launched in September 2021 under the leadership of Peter Biggs, from hub school St Laurence’s Catholic Primary. The partnership brings together 14 schools (12 primary, two secondary) from the Kirkby Collaborative of Schools which is managed by Steve Dixon.

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