Ada Lovelace Day 2024: inspiring future pioneers

 This October, Ignite! partnered with Pioneer Group to run our 7th annual event celebrating Ada Lovelace Day with children and young people across the country.  

Over two days across the UK, almost 400 school children participated in our interactive workshops held at 8 Pioneer Group locations and developed in consultation with Ignite! including BioCity Nottingham, Wilton Centre, Kent Science Park, Hexagon Tower, BioCity Glasgow, Edinburgh Technopole, Colworth Science Park, and MediCity Nottingham.

Ada Lovelace Day is all about celebrating the achievements and inspiring the next generation of women in STEM.  Here in Nottingham, we have a special connection with Ada Lovelace and our events at BioCity and MediCity provide hands-on interactions with women and non-binary scientists who are breaking down barriers and negative stereotypes about what it means to be a scientist, just like Ada!  

For Ada Lovelace Day 2024, Ignite delivered two exciting events in Nottingham, one for primary school children and one for KS3 girls, to visit a local site where science takes place, see the career paths and learn about the wide-range of jobs available to them in STEM.  The aim of the events was to showcase the innovative and inspiring people working in STEM and change perceptions of what it means to be a scientist through hands-on activities and connections with the amazing STEM network in Nottingham. 

On 7th October, our first event, we welcomed 123 children from 2 primary schools and 1 alternative provision in the immediate area to BioCity Nottingham.  Our second event, on 8th October at MediCity Nottingham, welcomed 135 KS3 girls from secondary schools in Nottingham, Nottinghamshire, and Derby.  They took part in engaging practical activities and talks such as inventing improvements for toothpaste or trainers, paper-making, learning about biomaterials and 3D printing, creating medical communications posters, a waste-water purification competition, experiments with chromatography and sugar porosity, programming Ozobots, and connecting with a robotic dog.  

Feedback from teachers and school staff who attended the Ada Lovelace Day events said that it provided “a real world careers context to stem skills and a great insight for our students” and that “engaging with practical activities with female role models” was particularly impactful for the students.  

When we asked what they enjoyed most, one student said: “Everything. This isn't just to be nice or something.  I literally cannot choose!”.  Another student said “I really enjoyed the day. It was amazing, I loved it.  I loved all of the lessons. I do not have a favourite one. I learned so many things that I didn't know.” 

A huge thank you goes to all those who delivered a workshop for Ada Lovelace Day and provided such engaging and inspiring experience for the schools who attended:  Freenome Ltd., Porterhouse Medical, Locate Bio, 4D Biomedicines, University of Nottingham Chemistry, University of Nottingham Computer Science, Trelleborg, Pipeline Organics, Leicester EBP, I Belong, Worn Again, Reach Separations, Myconeos, and HGF.  Thanks to the interactive workshops, demonstrations, career talks, and experiments, the students told us that they learned about “how science can impact everyday things”, “that science is fun” and “how important Ada Lovelace was”.  

At the start of each day, we asked every student to answer a simple question: Do you want to be a scientist?  We recorded all of these answers (yes, no, and not sure) and asked them all again at the end of the day to see if the event had inspired anyone else to pursue a career in science.  On both days, we saw an average of 15% increase in the number of children and girls who wanted to be a scientist. 

We were also left with a big question from the girls who attended the MediCity event that we should all take time to reflect on and work to change: 

“Why are there so few scientists from Nottingham?”

Who was Ada Lovelace?

Born in 1815, Ada Lovelace collaborated with inventor Charles Babbage on his general-purpose computing machine, the Analytical Engine. In 1843, she published what we would now call a computer program to generate Bernoulli Numbers. Lovelace was the first person to foresee the creative potential of the Engine. Her vision of computing’s possibilities was unmatched by any of her peers and went unrecognised for a century.

Ada Lovelace Day was founded by Suw Charman-Anderson in 2009 as a celebration aimed at highlighting the achievements of women in STEM fields and fostering the creation of new role models who can inspire young individuals to pursue STEM careers. Ignite!'s partnership with Pioneer Group has been running events in celebration of this occasion since 2018. Find out more about Ada Lovelace Day here.