After all the hard work that goes into slowly piecing Daphne together, it was great to find a prestigious establishment like the London Science Museum approaching us and expressing an interest in our project.

Each half-term, the museum puts on an event called Antenna Live, a hands-on exhibition where the most current and innovative ideas from science and technology are gathered and their concepts shared with museum visitors from around the world. This time the event will be held from the 8^th-10^th of March and exhibitioners can be expected to engage with up to 3000 members of the public per day, so we were delighted when the Museum asked us to get involved! Having kindly been invited to showcase our project, this weekend myself and fellow first-year Lucy Osborne were over the moon to accept an invitation to go down to the museum, in order to have some communication and media training prior to the event.

The day began with a surprisingly stress-free journey to the Science Museum itself, where we were then greeted and ushered in (much to our excitement) through a ‘behind the scenes’ back entrance. We then began the training with some discussions about what we thought people would like to gain from our exhibition, and how they would perceive our team’s radical new design ideas. It was surprising to see how our answers correlated with those of the researchers at the Science Museum, and after a lot of mind mapping and discussions we were starting to get a real feel for how our exhibit would look, the aims we wished to focus on and how we were going to achieve them.

After some intense discussions about how to engage with the public and what to do to make our exhibit stand out, we began to touch on the psychology behind such exhibits. We examined the best ways to showcase CUER in such a busy environment through a series of team building activities, including a ‘20 questions’ type game that explored how to stimulate and engage onlookers.

Having had a fantastic day with the Science Museum, we set off back to Cambridge feeling excited and ready to take on the task of properly planning our exhibit. We would like to thank the museum for their hospitality, and of course the opportunity to get involved in such an amazing and innovative event! Antenna Live will be running at the Science Museum from the 8^th-10^th of March, with CUER being found in the High Performance Gallery on the first floor.

Overall the day really highlighted the versatility of being part of a fascinating project like CUER; how cutting-edge science and an enthusiasm for sharing ideas can be combined, providing a powerful way of engaging with many members of the public yet on a surprisingly intimate level. See you there!
Sarah Barrington – Mechanical team member