I recently had the opportunity to visit the Cheltenham Science Festival for 3 days. It was the first science festival I had attended since secondary school, and what a weekend it was! The bustling atmosphere filled with children and adults of all ages, fascinating talks given to us by some of the biggest names in the scientific community, wonderful weather, and of course, the free food and drinks for ‘artists’ in the VIP green room were some of the best things about this weekend. I’m not going to lie, it was an intense, high-energy weekend with a definite lack of sleep, but every moment awake was worth it.
My involvement in the festival started at CABI, where I was asked if I wanted to join the team. At this point, I had no idea what I was going to be doing, but whatever it was, I felt like it would be a great experience, so I decided to give it a shot. My role throughout the festival was CABI’s social media manager and photographer. I was also to assist at a stall run by Millfield Medical Electronics, showing off their new CPAP device. The rest of the group would be presenting, on stage, at the festival.
As rehearsals and preparation for the demos went underway, I could sense the anticipation and slight worries about how smoothly the whole thing would run. Were the demos going to work on stage? Were there going to be enough people turning up to our talk? My mission was to make all of this known to as many people as possible in the scientific community. So I started taking these photos and uploading them, managing to get a nice group photo during one of the meetings. The tweets seemed to generate a decent amount of attention from the @CheltSciFest and different departments across UCL; I was also lucky because we had some Twitter experts here at CABI.
Finally, the day came, and I headed off to the festival. Actually, the festival ran for an entire week, but I could only make time to go for the weekend. On the way to Paddington station, I got to experience the brand new Elizabeth line, which was a much-needed improvement for the TFL. From there, a direct train took me all the way across the West of England to a town best known for its yearly horse-racing festival, Cheltenham. As soon as I stepped off the train, I was met with an air of relaxation that one could never experience in the streets of central London. I loved it. It felt peaceful, slow-paced, and quiet. Until I arrived at the festival. There was a complete contrast in the atmosphere. Still, seeing a community of children and adults interested in and passionate about science was inspiring.
Once I settled down and looked around the festival, I headed to Millfield Medical’s stall. Their 3CPAP machine was a feat of engineering innovation. The idea of incorporating a rebreather system (like the ones used by scuba divers) onto a CPAP device is such a simple one. Yet, no one had made one before. This new system also brought about a lot of other benefits compared to the traditional CPAP machines, including the fact the machine only needs a minimal supply of oxygen (via an oxygen concentrator) and electricity to run properly. It’s also significantly cheaper than many other machines currently on the market. I guess it’s good to get a perspective of your problems and challenges from outside your field of expertise, and who knows, you might just get the answers you need!
The stall was hectic. Kids and parents constantly came by, with many of them showing genuine interest in the 3CPAP machine (I think the little demos and VERY expensive training dummy helped a lot). But my favourite part of the stall was the conversations I had with the people running it. Professor Tom Clutton-Brock was very good at keeping the kids engaged and teaching them about ventilation in a way they would understand. He is among the most knowledgeable people I have ever met. I can see why he was given an MBE for his involvement in the ventilator challenge during the COVID-19 pandemic. Next, there was Martin Stanton, the inventor of the 3CPAP device. I was surprised to hear he had taught himself everything he needed to know to develop and make this machine. He told me that his dyslexia had prevented him from pursuing an academic path. Instead, he decided to challenge towards what he enjoyed doing, which is a mindset I admire. Finally, Finlay Thomson, the individual who made the stall come to life. As a representative of Millfield Medical, he was the glue that held the booth together. Without him, I would not have had the opportunity to be involved in the 3CPAP experience.
Finally, CABI’s talk! Up until this point, I had not been to any of the rehearsals (and they had only started preparing 3 weeks before the festival), so I was very excited (and somewhat nervous) to see what was in store and when the time came, they were AMAZING! One big hurdle was that the start time for the talk was incorrectly printed on the programme…but so many people turned up, and the hall was pretty full before the talk started. The audience were given a brief, basic, but nonetheless captivating presentation about some of the work undertaken in the lab, and the demos along with the enthusiasm of our presenters were all on point. I could not be more proud of the team here at CABI!!
Alas, the time came to head back to London...but in the classic British fashion, there were railway network problems, so the trip back became very long-winded. However, it was on this journey back that I met the author Alom Shaha and had an insightful talk with him about his previous experience as a filmmaker, his life as an author, and many other topics over the course of our ride back home. (Check out his latest book ‘Mr Shaha’s Marvellous Machines: https://www.waterstones.com/book/mr-shahas-marvellous-machines/alom-shaha/emily-robertson/9781913348120). One of the things I enjoy most is talking to people about their life journey, listening to the process of how they got to where they are now, and the conversations I had at the festival were probably some of the most interesting, mind-expanding discussions I’ve had yet :)
Overall, I think the festival was a huge success, and I will definitely be going back next year!
Dan