Hello, my name is Heather. I’m one of the two new recruits on the Outreach and Resources team at the Science Museum. I’ve been in the team for two months now, and I’ve already had some amazing experiences!
The Outreach team’s job is to travel around the country, bringing explosive science shows and workshops to schools, communities and festivals. The Outreach team perform lots of different shows and workshops. Most of my time has been spent in training, learning to perform the shows. Here I am performing the Glorious Blood show for the very first time in a school. The flour shower experiment was very popular!
On Mondays, the Outreach team plan their visits for the week. As well as figuring out how to get to the different schools, we also need to figure out what props we need to bring for our shows. Every Monday, the team goes to the Outreach storeroom to organise the show props for the week. We perform 22 different shows and workshops, so there are a lot of boxes in the storeroom.
Once we’ve sorted out what we need, we load all the props into the Outreach van. Lifting the boxes can be tiring work, but I’ve been getting better at it every day. Sometimes fitting all the boxes into the van can be like a giant game of Tetris, but the oldies on the team make it look easy.
When we’re not out visiting schools or communities, we’re in the office planning our visits, ringing up schools, or working on special projects. One of my projects is to update the Meet the Team section of our webpages. I’ll be taking photos of the team, asking them intriguing interview questions and putting their answers up on the website for all to see. Watch this space!
One of the best aspects of working in Outreach, aside from all the different shows I get to perform, is visiting new places. Occasionally the Outreach team go on away trips to exotic locations such as Ireland, Italy and Hong Kong. My favourite away trip to date has been the annual Outreach trip to Gibraltar. Our team performed shows and workshops for every school over the course of the week. I was surprised when I saw photos of myself and Laura performing the Not So Sleepy Hedgehog storytelling in the local newspaper on my second day!
I’ve been learning something new every day on the Outreach team, and I’m having an absolute blast visiting people all around the world and showing them how fun science can be. Perhaps I’ll see you around in the New Year!
If you’d like the Science Museum’s outreach team to visit your school or event, details of what we offer and how to book can be found on our website.