Christ Church was delighted to host Inspiring Minds and Engineering Summer Schools in 2018 – two exciting outreach programmes designed to ignite an interest in STEM subjects among secondary school children.

The Inspiring Minds programme consisted of a series of Saturday workshops and sessions at the Canterbury Campus, with the aim of empowering school children to make informed decisions about their education and employment trajectories while providing spaces where they can share their ideas with each other and have their voices heard.

The course helped build students’ ability to think across their subjects and beyond, to ask good questions and to make better use of their knowledge – encouraging the kind of inquisitiveness and clued-up thinking that universities and employers are increasingly looking for.

All sessions had direct real-world links back to the curriculum and give students the opportunity to design and create solutions to genuine questions that touch on the nature of human uniqueness and, link to their interests.

To coincide with the Government’s Year of Engineering and the University’s exciting plans for curriculum expansion in science, engineering and technology, Christ Church also partnered with the Bloodhound Supersonic Car (SSC) Project to deliver innovative education and engagement activities at two residential summer schools on the Canterbury Campus in July.

During the summer school programmes, the pupils learned about the underlying engineering principles behind Bloodhound, including the drag, thrust, aerodynamics and friction of this supersonic car before going on to design, build and race their own model rocket cars with the expertise and assistance of the Bloodhound team. They also enjoyed an interactive tour of the modular Bloodhound Car, enabling them to learn more about the project and its many unique components.

Both the summer schools and the Inspiring Minds project were funded by the Kent and Medway Collaborative Outreach Programme (KaMCOP), a group of higher education institutions (including Christ Church) and further education colleges who are working together to deliver targeted outreach across the region.