Background UNBOXED

Background UNBOXED Creations This project celebrates creativity in STEAM. Your students will explore awe-inspiring new ideas that come from brilliant minds in science, technology, engineering, the arts and mathematics working together in surprising and exciting ways. They will use what they learn to create their own idea for an unforgettable experience. UNBOXED: Creativity in the UK (2022) UNBOXED was a celebration of creativity in the UK. During 2022, 10 large-scale awe-inspiring projects were delivered all over the four nations of the UK. These projects were unlike anything seen before as UNBOXED challenged scientists, technicians, engineers, artists and mathematicians. to work together in unexpected and new collaborations. These collaborations of talent formed teams that spent six months developing their ideas, coming up with sketches and mood boards before pitching their ideas to the UNBOXED creative directors. The winning teams were awarded funding to make their wild and wonderful ideas a reality. UNBOXED discovered that when you bring together the greatest minds in the UK from across all these different subject areas, you can create something magical. This magic took the form of big, never seen before projects that thousands of people experienced. Each project has key messages or themes it is exploring and challenging the public to think about. These are topics that are often difficult or overwhelming to understand, such as our climate crisis, our understanding of identity or our place in the universe. The projects use art and STEM to help the public explore these topics in a way that’s fun and easier to understand. In Workshop 2 your students will explore case studies of the flagship events from the festival. From unmissable events to unforgettable experiences, all in places and spaces right across the UK; from coastal towns and city centres to breath-taking areas of natural beauty. The UNBOXED projects were created by all sorts of different organisations, but all were expected to platform emerging talent and underrepresented voices and include experts from across the core STEAM subjects. Each project was required to represent STEM and the arts. STEAM STEAM is all about looking at how STEM and art complement each other work together. The arts might refer to any visual or performing arts, such as dance, design, painting, photography and writing. The STEAM approach aims to integrate STEM subjects with arts subjects, using engineering or technology in imaginative designs or approaches to real-world problems, while building on a mathematics and science base. Combining arts with other STEM subjects in this way helps your students to: • explore problems from different perspectives and approaches • highlight the vital role of STEM in the arts • think about STEM and the arts as interdependent, not as totally separate subjects • encourage innovation • promote critical thinking. • draw on reasoning and design principles • inspire creative solutions. 8

Background Celebrating creativity Festivals celebrating creativity and innovation date back to the 19 th century. Here are two examples from the UK, but there are others from all over the world. The Great Exhibition (1851) 1 The Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park, London in 1851 and was the first in a series of World Fairs - exhibitions of culture and industry that became popular in the 19th century (although an earlier French Industrial Exhibition took place in 1844). This was a celebration of modern industrial technology and design born from Britain's industrial revolution, although countries from around the world could also display their achievements. Six million people—equivalent to a third of the entire population of Britain at the time—visited the Great Exhibition. Attended by many famous people including Queen Victoria, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Michael Faraday, Samuel Colt, Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens, Lewis Carroll, George Eliot, Alfred Tennyson and William Thackeray. Exhibits included: • Art and colonial raw materials held prestigious place – displayed most prominently. • Technology and moving machinery were also popular, especially working exhibits e.g. live cotton production process from spinning to finished cloth. • Also popular were scientific instruments such as electric telegraphs, microscopes, air pumps and barometers, as well as musical, horological and surgical instruments. Festival of Britain (1951) 2 The Festival of Britain was a national exhibition and fair in London in the summer of 1951. At the same time smaller festivals took place across the rest of the country. In the post-war era the festival celebrated inventiveness and genius of British scientists and technologists, with the goal of giving the people a feeling of successful recovery from the war's devastation, showcasing better-quality design in the rebuilding of British towns and cities, and promoting British science, technology, industrial design, architecture and the arts. The festival had millions of visitors and helped reshape British arts, crafts, designs and sports for a generation. Exhibits focused on town planning, scientific progress, and all sorts of traditional and modern arts and crafts. The Festival's centrepiece was the South Bank Exhibition, which demonstrated the contribution made by British advances in science, technology and industrial design. Other exhibits included a Festival Pleasure Gardens in Battersea, an Exhibition of Industrial Power in Glasgow, linen technology and science in agriculture were exhibited in "Farm and Factory" in Belfast, a Festival ship toured the coast of Britain throughout the summer of 1951, and a travelling exhibition of industrial design. 1 historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofEngland/Great-Exhibition-of-1851/ 2 historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofBritain/The-Festival-of-Britain-1951/ 9