CITER returns to the annual Green Man Festival

CITER was fortunate to return to this year’s Green Man Festival to enthuse children about science. Green Man is an independent music and arts family friendly festival which has been running since 2003 and takes place in Crickhowell, Powys, Wales. This year the four day festival took place between 15–18 August 2019.

There are ten areas to explore with a full itinerary embracing science, live comedy, literature, film, music, performing and visual arts. CITER had a presence in the Einstein’s Garden area which is part of the festival’s interactive science offer. Our marquee offering included two activities in relation to “blood and cells” which were fun, scientific and interactive.

As part of the activities children could guess how much blood is in their body, learn about the different types of body cells, make a cell out of modelling clay as well as learn how the body reacts when cut demonstrated through the “wound painting” activity.

During the festival we had over five hundred visitors to our marquee with Saturday being the busiest day – the sunshine was out and we had long ques forming outside the marquee! The children enjoyed the hands on activity of creating cell models using modelling clay and many wonderful creations were made and taken away. Our wound painting offering was extremely popular, we created many realistic wounds and went through a lot of fake blood!

“This was another very successful year for CITER at Green Man! The wound painting activity was a real hit for the children (and the grown ups!) and we even saw the same smiling faces returning four days in a row. I highly recommend this event to other CITER members because there’s never a dull moment and you get to meet and talk to so many interesting people. Roll on Green Man 2020!”

We really enjoyed being part of this event and hope to continue to return to the Green Man Festival next year and enthuse even more adults and children about our scientific activities and the work of CITER.

A huge thank you to our four volunteers Dr Siân Morgan, Dr Rachael Moses, Dr Irina Erchova and Divesh Kamal for their time, commitment, hard work and enthusiasm over the four days – without them this event would not have been possible.

The success of our events rely on our volunteers, if you are a CITER member/STEM Ambassador or interested in becoming a CITER member/STEM Ambassador to volunteer in our 2019/20 public events and school visits please contact the CITER office - our calendar is beginning to look busy for the year ahead!