Help us celebrate art, craft, engineering, and sciences (STEAM) with local makers at Birkenhead Central Library and Williamson Art Gallery on 3/6/23 for the first ever Wirral MakeFest, a free one-day community event that encourages innovation, promotes emerging fields, and is uniquely focused on sustainability.
Because Birkenhead is one of the top deprived areas nationally, we aim to make this event accessible for all, as it’s projected that STEM jobs will grow 11% by 2031. Through fun hands-on experiences of VR, coding, engineering, and art with experts, we hope to inspire the next generation to dream, innovate and create. Key to our plans is to reach underserved communities including low income families and SEND families. According to the Children’s Commissioner ‘SEN are significantly less likely to be in work and, on average, have much lower earnings 15 years after Key Stage 4’. Part of the day will be having families interact with makers who can showcase non-traditional routes into roles like gaming and crafting.
MakeFest will be fun and inclusive for all, and to emphasize this, we’d like your help to rent a planetarium to provide a sensory experience that will support SEN families.
During Makefest, Williamson Art Gallery will be highlighting their Apollo Remastered exhibition which combines art and science of space travel through photos of the first moon landing. We wanted a way to enthuse families with space and ensure families visit both venues. We also wanted to provide a sensory area for families at the library, as it is open plan, it can be overwhelming to SEND families. To help minimise this, and to engage the wider public, we want to hire a planetarium and facilitators to put on 10 space shows during the day that are wheelchair accessible and SEND supportive. People of all ages will be able to sit on the floor and look at the stars inside the inflated planetarium and hear about their courses through the solar system.