Cheltenham Science Festival 2025 - Part 2: “Where do we go from here?”

11 June 2025

In the second part of her Cheltenham Science Festival reflection, RESILIENCE Outreach champion Dr. Bernice Wright shares some examples of individual conversations and responses to our outreach efforts, picking up on a commonly heard question as we reflect on our own hopes and ambitions for genuine impact on science skills for future medicines manufacturing. You can read Bernice’s companion piece Part 1: ‘A View from the Tent’ here.

The scope of the Cheltenham Science Festival extends beyond the wide range of intelligent, colourful, exciting, (and frankly totally awesome) science that it delivers. Children come to the Festival with some STEM knowledge gained in the classroom, but they leave with broadened horizons about science, and the applications of new advanced medicines in particular. At this year’s Festival, RESILIENCE and Innovation Hubs worked together to shape those impressions and we would like to thank them for this strategic alliance.

Deeply and positively influenced

We engaged in stimulating conversations with people of all ages but mainly with very young children, some of whom were so precocious, that we believe we can be assured of a future generation of highly skilled scientists working to manufacture medicines. I and my colleagues left Cheltenham Science Festival deeply and positively influenced by the wonderful experiences that we had with the people we met: visitors, RESILIENCE and Innovation Hub staff, and our fantastic team of volunteers. The RESILIENCE STEM activities, the keen public interest in modern medicines, and the need for general education about the UK pharmaceutical industry were messages we took away from the festival.

Evident demand for teaching and outreach materials

Our STEM outreach collaboration with the Innovation Hubs (Life Arc, BSGCT, MRC, Gene Therapy Hubs) at the festival included a clay modelling activity that was so popular, teachers visiting their stand with their students wanted to know where to purchase the viral vector and cell flashcards we used for the activity. The Innovation Hubs volunteers told them that the cards had been made by RESILIENCE and they replied that they wanted them to use for teaching. This evident demand for our outreach materials was repeated on the RESILIENCE stand on several occasions during the week of the festival. Both parents and teachers wanted details for suppliers of the flashcards for molecular modelling of chemical structures, the ‘Scientists Make Medicines’ colouring book, and the ‘Laboratory Notebook’. This sort of response and positive feedback will allow RESILIENCE to make important developments to the free educational materials included in our membership models.

A whirlwind of controlled chaos

The school sessions at the festival were a whirlwind of controlled chaos that saw about 200 students attending stands in the Discover Zone every hour for five consecutive hours during the first four days. It seemed like every activity was in demand and enjoyed enthusiastically by almost every child. When we could speak to teachers, some asked if RESILIENCE visited schools to deliver our activities (especially VR) or if schools could visit the centres to engage in the activities we provided at the festival. Despite the focus that the Cheltenham Science Festival quite rightly places on engaging people with the science activities on offer, we were able to connect with educators and register a number of schools as standard members with RESILIENCE.

“I have that!”

Our most popular activity was the mixed and immersive VR that we offered at both the RESILIENCE and Innovation Hubs stands. Children (and adults lucky enough to have a try) were extremely inquisitive about the laboratory scenarios we designed using the FourPlus Immersive, Eclipse Creator software, and the feedback we collected from them was overwhelmingly positive. The goal for delivery of those new simulations was to spark curiosity about the inner workings of laboratories that are used to make medicines, and we think we achieved this.

The ‘Wheel of Medicine’ was often challenging as the premise for this game was to match advanced medicines to their mechanisms of action, but it drew many players because it involved winning prizes. The most inspirational player was a young boy who exclaimed. ‘I have that!’ while he was listening to the description of genetic conditions. He told us that he had a genetic condition called COL4A1. When we explained that gene therapies are developed to cure genetic conditions he almost shouted, ‘Really?’ He said he thought this was great. Later, we were delighted to meet a young boy who had what appeared to be a severe motor neuron condition. He was in a wheel chair and had trouble coordinating his hands but he was eager to play the ‘Wheel of Medicine’ game, and he did.

One of the most impressive visitors to the RESILIENCE stand was a little girl who tried the pipetting activity. She responded confidently to every question we asked her, asked plenty of her own questions, and knew with certainty that she wanted to become a marine biologist. Her control of the P1000 micropipette was almost flawless, even more so because she did not stop pipetting as she spoke!

Children seem to divide into Lego-lovers and others. Those who love it, are really passionate about it. One young girl first built a Lego model of a Bunsen burner at the RESILIENCE stand, then went over to the Innovation Hubs and made one in clay too. She then brought this back to the RESILIENCE stand for a photograph and to let us see what she had achieved.

“John’s Wonderful Chemistry Lesson”

The molecular modelling activity received consistent attention from children throughout the festival, and in fact was notable for regularly creating a tidal wave of interest that steadily moved our activity table back about 20 - 30 cm during each hourly session. Thank goodness for our five minute reset window between groups! Most children tried to build the amino acids, neurotransmitters, and small molecule drugs we provided on flashcards, but some synthesised their own molecules. One of our volunteers for this activity was a chemist who explained the chemistry and found that once some children understood that their molecules could be explosive, they wanted to make others like them.

Another member of our team was almost moved to tears when working with a younger group who were expressing their creativity building free-form molecular models. In these circumstances, we get the children to think by asking questions like, “Do you think you’ve made a medicine or a poison?” or, “Now you’ve made a new drug, it’s going to need a good brand name. What are you going to call it?” Faced with this latter question, one little lad, thought deeply for a long time, then asked, “What’s your name?” Slightly nonplussed, our man replied, “John.” After another long pause, came the answer, “In that case, I’m going to call it ‘John’s Wonderful Chemistry Lesson.’”

A genuine interest in modern developments in medicine

We generally found that people were genuinely interested in modern developments in medicine. We had several interesting conversations with the more adult festival goers at the ‘Wheel of Medicine’ about the development of exosomes to treat arthritis and how chimeric antigen receptor T-cell (CAR-T) therapy is used to treat cancer. The grandparent of one child wanted to know if exosomes were an approved medicine for treating arthritis and we explained that they are currently being evaluated in early human clinical trials.

A conversation about the purpose of RESILIENCE started with a discussion about the skills gap in medicines manufacturing in the UK and evolved to preparedness for future disease pandemics and stockpiling of medicines, national and international political influence on availability of COVID vaccines, the safety of vaccines, e.g., COVID vaccines, and the development of CAR-T therapy for treating solid tumour cancers.

The Need for RESILIENCE

Some people wanted to know why RESILIENCE was needed. One man thought that pharmaceutical companies are very capable of training their workforce and we explained that whilst those companies do offer graduate programmes, those require training resources that are not necessarily available in-house. We explained the lack of highly skilled workers in pharmaceutical manufacturing and the technical and professional skills training that RESILIENCE provides to attract and retain people in this industrial sector. We also talked about the key differences between apprenticeship degrees that are vocational and focussed on acquisition of professional skills compared to conventional university degrees that are more academic.

We met a retired woman who matched aspirin to its mechanism of action on the ‘Wheel of Medicine’ and asked why we didn’t have paracetamol for treating headaches. We directed her to our molecular modelling activity and she built the paracetamol molecule. A number of professional scientists also came to the RESILIENCE stand. One of them thought it was great that we had included CAR-T on the ‘Wheel of Medicine’. She told us that she had worked on a novel type of T-cell therapy called invariant natural killer T (iNKT) cells. Another scientist was a school teacher with a doctoral degree in chemistry who thought that the molecular modelling activity was a great idea.

Parents would often come up to the ‘Wheel of Medicine’ with their children and ask questions about the medicines that the wheel landed on when the child played the game. They wanted to know if the receptors in the membrane of exosomes were really shaped as shown in the pictures. When we said that they were, they asked how did we find out and we explained the basics of structural biology techniques used to characterise protein structure. Another question from a parent was, ‘When we get sick, does the body make antibodies the same way that it does when we are given a vaccine?’ We explained that the way the body makes antibodies is similar way when we get sick and when we are vaccinated. We were always pleasantly surprised with the level of knowledge from non-scientists of sometimes complex science. 

Investing in the imaginations of a future generation of scientists

In summary, the Cheltenham Science Festival was a real adventure and a complete delight. For RESILIENCE, the festival represents an investment in the imaginations of a future generation of scientists who will work within all facets of the pharmaceutical industry to develop and maintain thriving and resilient UK healthcare systems.