What is Family Fun Day?

Family Fun Day (FFD) is a day where we open up the Royal Institution to families with children aged 6-12 years old and consists of activity and demonstration stalls across the building for families to attend. The whole idea is to engage families with science in an interactive and fun way and encourage adults and children to discover and discuss STEM topics together. While some activities might relate to the school curriculum, a lot of them are outside core curriculum subjects to help expand the science capital of families attending.

There are also two 30 minute shows that happen in the theatre, which get repeated throughout the day.

We expect around 550 – 600 people through the doors throughout the day, with our theatre holding around 150 - 250 people per show. 

Theme

July’s theme is all about science communication and engaging with the public. We’ve chosen this for two reasons. The Ri will be celebrating 200 years of our CHRISTMAS LECTURES, a televised science communication lecture that is aimed at 11-17 year olds.  

This means you can choose whatever STEM topic you desire! It’s a broad theme and gives you the opportunity to choose a topic that you feel comfortable communicating.

Timings

This FFD will be on Saturday 19 July, 11am – 4pm.

Participants will be able to set up either on the morning of the event from 9am, or during the afternoon the day before.

Lunch is provided and dietary requirements noted nearer the time. We ask, if possible, if you can provide enough volunteers to help cover each other’s lunch. If not, we have a pool of volunteers and staff that can provide lunch cover.

Space available

You will automatically be given a 6 foot trestle table and about 2mx2m in space. If you require more space, or have a large activity, do let us know as we can dedicate more space to you. Items such as TV screens or flipcharts are available but limited so do let us know if you require these.

Anything that involves fire or water will be placed in a certain room due to heritage items and health and safety.

Expression of interest info

Activity and demonstration stalls can range from:

1 – A pure demonstration of a subject that our audience will watch and talk to the presenter about. This will usually mean families spend up to 5 minutes with you. Eg – showing off a new piece of medical equipment.

2 – An activity that involves the audience interacting with objects and either experimenting with them or trialling something. Usually takes 5-10 minutes time.  Eg VR headset or investigating objects with an IR camera.

3 – A sit down arts and crafts activity that the audience can take away with them. This can take 5-15 minutes depending on how detailed the crafting is. Eg creating a satellite following origami instructions.

We will ask you to send us information about what you would like to do activity wise and the learning outcomes you’d like to achieve. We will be choosing a mixture of the three types of activities mentioned above and making sure that we have a good variety of demos, activities and arts and crafts. If you have a risk assessment already, please do send this along with your proposal.

If you have an idea, but you’re not sure how to implement it please still let us know! Our demo and lab teams are available to help some people turn their ideas into reality. This will be limited to only a few stalls due to staff capacity.

We’re also accepting applications for the 30 minute shows in the theatre. You will have the lab and demo team helping you as well as providing some consumables.

Timeline

Initial ideas will be received by Friday 28^th February.

The team will then work with groups and finalise the participants by the end of May.

Email Lisa Derry lderry@ri.ac.uk with your expression of interest.