Arts & Science festival ‘SMASHfestUK’ win education award
A festival which uses virtual reality technology to recreate the experience of a natural disaster for children has won an education award.
The University of Greenwich’s SMASHfestUK, an arts, tech and science festival, won The Times Higher Education’s Outstanding Contribution to the Local Community award.
Dr Lindsay Keith, a Creative Research Fellow at Greenwich, created the festival.
She said: “By asking ‘what if this disaster meant we couldn’t survive or rebuild?’ we’re getting young people to use their creativity and skills to confront future challenges.
“To see SMASHfestUK grow like this is incredible. It is a great way of getting kids interested in science and to win such a prestigious award is a wonderful endorsement of the hard work by everyone involved.”
The festival is a collaboration with Middlesex University and The Refinery and is aimed at under 16s.
Since SMASHfestUK started in Deptford three years ago more than 60,000 people have taken part.
The idea is to get young people interested in arts and science, technology, engineering and maths.
Around 70 per cent of the visitors were of black or mixed heritage and 62 per cent were girls.