Science students to take on dragons

The KM Bright Spark Awards, which aim to increase the cool factor of science, technology, engineering and maths is now open for you to nominate your students' strongest projects.

Bright Spark Awards 2017 launch from KM Charity Team on Vimeo.

The awards were launched at Kent innovation hub Discovery Park. The event was attended by judges of the awards from Pfizer, ITL, Benenden Hospital Trust and Prendon Panels.

Robert Crook from Pfizer said: “It’s really important to get young people involved and enthused with science and build the next generation of scientists who are hopefully going to bring forward the next round of scientific discoveries.”

Primary and Secondary teachers are now invited to enter student teams with exciting projects that feature cross-curricular collaborations in STEM subjects.

The annual awards have a Dragon’s Den-style format with students invited on stage to showcase their science projects with the chance to win prizes. The three categories are innovation, investigation and invention.

Finalists will be filmed in advance in school to show the detail of the project. This is screened at the event before the dragons begin their questioning of students.

Victoria Prenczek from Prendon Panels is keen to encourage more girls to enter the competition. “As a businesswoman, it’s really important to me to encourage young girls to get involved in careers that are a bit out of the norm, perhaps engineering or science, something you wouldn’t necessarily expect them to be doing,” she said.

A career may well be on the cards for successful Bright Sparks, as ITL’s Carl Lincoln said: “When we started sponsoring the Bright Spark Awards, we actually used it to find ourselves an apprentice. We were struggling to find someone and we thought what better way to do it than try before you buy by seeing people’s presentation and engineering skills in practice. We ended up taking someone on and he’s already doing a fantastic job!”

The awards are open to teams from all school years. Event dragons include representatives from Pfizer, ITL, Benenden Hospital Trust, Prendon Panels, Hectic Lifestlyes, Golding Homes and BAE Systems.

To submit a nomination, visit the KM Bright Spark Awards website and complete the simple online form. The best entries will be invited to the competition final at Discovery Park, Sandwich on the first Friday in July where the champions will be presented with a cheque of £500.

Contact Details

Lisa Craig
Telephone: 08442 640291
Email: lcraig@thekmgroup.co.uk