Our Community Festival returns this weekend!
21 Jun 2022
Join us on Saturday, 25 June at our Community Festival
There's so much to do at our Community Festival. Whether you are young or old, interested in science or art, want to get hands-on and have fun or just want to find out more about the plethora of work that takes place at the University, join us this Saturday for a fun day of family activities.
We’re inviting you and all our friends and neighbours in the local community to go behind the scenes of the University and discover the exciting work taking place here. This free event has something for everyone - hands-on activities, tours, live experiments, sporting challenges, creative arts, face-painting, a pop-up Manchester Museum, the chance to meet with our staff, students and community partners...and much, much more!
Here's just a sample of some of our free drop-in activities:
Amazing hearts: how can we keep them healthy? Our hearts are amazing! Crawl through our blood vessel tunnel, discover what your heart is doing and how it manages to work so well and find out how healthy choices can make a positive impact on our hearts.
Whitworth Babies: For the Under 2’s and their grown-ups. Enjoy a special time together in some sensory play with your baby, helping to aid their development, bonding and attachment.
Equality, Diversity & Inclusion: Sharing your stories: Meet the team to hear about how we celebrate our differences and aim to tackle inequality on campus towards equality groups including: people of all ages, people of all genders, people of different or no religions, disabled people, people of ethnic minorities, and LGBT+ people. Share with us your stories and help us build a Community Day diversity collage!
Meteorite hunt! Spotting rocks from space is easy when they’re still hurtling through the sky. But once they’ve landed, how can we tell them from other boulders, stones or pebbles? Try out some space sleuthing yourself by trying out the tricks and techniques used by astro geologists from the Earth and Solar System team.
Marvellous marbling: Science meets art by using liquids with different densities and surface tension to create colourful floating patterns which can then be transferred onto our card shapes for you to take away. We explore how 2D materials are introduced into lighter liquids to create a thin film which have the potential to be used for a variety of applications such as sensors and strain gauges.
Graphene, the material of the future! Walk through the history of graphene from discovery to future application. Make your own graphene and see how researchers are exploiting the incredible properties of this one-atom-thick material and other 2D materials.
And there will be many, many more!
You can also pre-book on free tours and attend drop-in performances such as:
Our Heritage tour: journeying around the University’s fine neo-gothic architecture and sites of world-changing discovery and hearing how our University developed from pioneering origins in the industrial revolution to become a leading university.
The Flash Bang Show: Everyone’s favourite, this demonstration opens your eyes to the amazing world of chemistry that is all around us. There will be fantastic colour changes, flashes and the occasional bang, so hold on to your hats! - 15:00 to 16:00, first come, first served.
Find out more
- The full programme of events can be found on the Community Festival webpages.
- You can register for the pre-bookable tours.
So, join us on Saturday, 25 June and be sure to share what you’re up to on social media using the hashtag #communityfestUoM