On Saturday 27th June, Ciaran, Laura and Geoff had the pleasure of participating in the Raddlebarn Primary School Summer Fair. Organiser Sally Hunt had previously seen Ciaran at Fun Palace at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre with her family during October of last year. Her children had greatly enjoyed isolating DNA from strawberries, so Sally thought the experiment would be a great addition to the Summer Fair. The event was held within the school playground where a number of groups had set-up activities in which the children could participate. The purpose of the Fair was to raise money for Raddlebarn Primary School, so the children had to pay for some of the activities, while others, including the strawberry DNA extraction, were free. Initially, there was little interest in the DECIDE booth and no participants for the first 10-20 minutes. It appeared that the children were unaware that the activity was free! With this in mind, Laura designed a sign for the booth containing the word ‘FREE’ in a very large font, in the hope of attracting more attention. Once the sign was in place, it wasn’t long until the children were lining up to extract DNA. It quickly became a popular activity, and some children even returned two or three times during the day. By the end of the Fair, around 50 participants had taken part and everyone involved greatly enjoyed it, parents included. After the event, Sally got in touch to say that she had received great feedback about the strawberry activity. The Fair raised £2,000 for the School and it is great to know that DECIDE outreach activities had such a positive impact.
Posted on Monday 10th August 2015