Manchester Branch of the British Science Association
The Manchester Branch aims to engage people of all ages about science and engineering by organising activities and events across Greater Manchester. Our vision is that science will be seen not just as a serious and difficult discipline, but as something fun and playful; for enjoyment and entertainment, in the same way as music, sports and the arts.
The Manchester Branch have run activity stalls at Live from Jodrell Bank, Science Spectacular and at the Manchester Museum’s Big Saturdays. We've run competitions with schools, such as the ‘BEST’ competition – a dragon’s den style business-science competition with college and 6th-form students – and ‘3-Minutes Science’ a science documentary competition for secondary schools (the winner is amazing incidentally – please watch here). We've made carrot clarinets, extracted DNA from strawberries, built an army of paper-mache spiders...
The main British Science Association organise major initiatives across the UK, including British Science Week; the annual British Science Festival; regional and local events through our network of Branches; the CREST Awards, and other programmes for young people in schools and colleges. We run specific activities and training for professional science communicators; we undertake research and policy work; and we seek to influence and collaborate with stakeholders including policy makers and opinion formers, leaders from across different sectors of business, industry and public life.