Connecting Communities to Queen Mary: A Season of Engagement
This year, the Engagement Team has been rethinking how we support Queen Mary staff and students to connect with communities and bring their research to life through interactive engagement at local events and large-scale festivals.
Between June and October we took the Engagement Team on the road, hosting four major events across London and connected dozens of Queen Mary staff and students with over 3,000 people of all ages.
Here’s what we got up to…
Our summer of engagement started in June at one of the UK’s largest free family festivals, the Lambeth Country Show. Teams of researchers and student ambassadors from the Centre of the Cell and the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences joined us in the festival’s “Science Big Top”. Over the weekend, around 1,000 people dropped by to take part in their activities. Visitors designed and crafted cells, explored time and space relativity through biscuit decorating, and created sodium alginate ‘Jelly Worms’. After the event, one staff member reflected on the scale of the event, saying, “It was great to showcase our activities and connect with so many people in one event”.
In July, we had the opportunity to celebrate family and community just 10 minutes away from our Mile End campus at the Tower Hamlets Family Hubs South West Locality Summer Fun Day. Seven stalls showcased everything from pop-up sports activities to identity self-portraiture with the Legal Advice Centre. We also started evaluating work with a simple, child-friendly sticker system – we were happy to receive 98% positive feedback for the activities (64% of people loved the activities and 34% liked them).
In August we partnered with the Blizard Institute’s Centre of the Cell to run our second annual Science Fun Day. With twice the visitors of last year, 120 people joined to visit the STEM Pod Experience, learn about careers in STEM, and take part in hands-on activities.
Across three days in October, we hosted a stall at New Scientist Live, one of the UK’s largest public science festivals. As well as bringing four teams of QMUL staff and students to host stalls at the event, we also ran a community ticket scheme to share 150 free passes with local schools and community partners. Activities challenged visitors to grapple with policy making decisions around Universal Free School Meals, explore green spaces’ role in the health of wildlife and humans, learn about the structures of the brain, and even grow their own microbes.
Coming up in 2026
In February, we are excited to host Environmental Resilience in East London: Research Partnerships for a Sustainable Future as part of Queen Mary’s programming for Climate Action Week. This is an opportunity for colleagues in the East London Research Network to connect with local organisations and community leaders. Together, attendees can discuss ongoing work and emerging projects related to the climate emergency, environment justice, and sustainability while fostering new connections.
We are looking forward to partnering with the School of Physical and Chemical Sciences on bringing the Moon Palace project to Mile End Campus in March. A mobile observatory and artwork which has been travelling the country, the Moon Palace is a physics engagement project that will train Queen Mary students to be science hosts, welcoming groups of local school children and community groups to engage in a dynamic learning experience where astronomy meets culture.
March is also Women’s History Month, which we will be celebrating with Threads of Liberation: Women’s Liberation in East London Past, Present, and Future. At this event, guests will gain access to materials documenting women’s fight for justice collected from both the Queen Mary Library and Tower Hamlets Archives. The British/Bangla women’s organisation Oitij-Jo will then lead a Nakshi Kantha (traditional Bengali embroidery) workshop, where guest can reflect on what liberation means to them by creating a piece of art.