FOSAC Projects
The Festival of Sciences and Curiosity (FOSAC) is an annual festival celebrating science, technology, engineering, an maths, with a key aim of "celebrating curiosity" and encouraging young people to "ask quesitons" and "take a leading role in finding out the answers" (FOSAC, 2022). The festival is attended by primary and secondary school aged children from a variety of backgrounds in the Nottinghamshire area, including home-schooled children, children attending local authority-maintained schools, and children attending academy trust-maintained schools.
Since 2019, Dr Rebecca Rickaby and Dr John Shaw have been working alongside Year 3 undergraduate students in the School of Pharmacy to deliver outreach activities at the festival, with Dr Catherine Finch joining the project in 2021. Outreach activities delivered by the research group are centred around communicating publich health messages to children, with areas of focus including respiratory hygiene, tropical disease awareness and prevention, the role of handwashing and vaccination in reducing communicable disease tramsission, and the structure and function of point-of-care tests. Participation of the Year 3 pharmacy students in the projects has provided them with opportunities to consider the language and dexterity of learners with a level of scientific literacy different to their own; this acts as a cornerstone in the practice of pharmacists, whom have a pivotal role in sharing accurate and comprehendible information with patients.
The enthusiasm and commitment of the undergraduate students joining the projects has been a key asset of the events. In 2021 this meant that, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the group were still able to deliver online outreach activities to homes across Nottinghamshire. The Year 3 students were able to co-create Xerte packages demonstrating how to build a virus and tapeworm using a selection of consumables available in local supermarkets, in addition to hosting live online sessions. Other Xerte packages covered vacciniations and awareness of Giardiasis.
In 2022, the popularity of the activities continued, with the majority of in person sessions running to capacity. Workshops were hosted at Clifton, the Meadows, and Hyson Green liraries and included activities whereby learners investigated protein production by micro-organisms, in addition to using molecular modelling kits to investigate the specificity of point-of-care tests for SARS-CoV-2. In the case of the latter, the workshop endeavoured to increase public awareness of the function of point-of-case tests in the hopes of equipping attendees with the knowledge to identify misinformation spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.
References
Nottingham Festival of Science and Curiosity (FOSAC). About the Festival. 2022 [cited 2022 26/08]; Available from: https://nottsfosac.co.uk/about/