A decade at the Festival

Rakhee Parmar (centre) at the Fleming Initiative's Great Exhibition Road Festival stands with volunteers Dubem Anyaduba, Jack Cooper, and Uchechukwu Anyaduba (left to right).

This year marked my tenth year at the Great Exhibition Road Festival. I did my first stint when it was still only an Imperial College London event and since then it has transformed into a much larger arts and science festival spanning the whole of Exhibition Road, with activities from our neighbouring museums and other institutions also present.

The Fleming Initiative and the Health Protection Research Unit in HCAI and AMR, together with the Centre for Antimicrobial Optimisation, hosted four antimicrobial resistance (AMR) themed stands in the Discovery tent within the Family Zone: Kenny Kerplunk Sheep, Modern Medicine Jenga, Thank You Antibiotics, and our Antibiotic Citizen Engagement (ACE) science project.

Thanks to the huge graduation marquee, we were able to showcase our activities with lots of space for families to enjoy and learn about AMR in a fun and interactive way.

Kenny the Kerplunk sheep was a showstopper, attracting lots of children and families, who were curious to learn more about the transmission of AMR from farm to fork in the engaging game.

Modern Medicine Jenga taught children how antibiotics and modern medicine have served humanity, while creating some chaos on the marquee carpet! Meanwhile, parents discovered how important antibiotics are to everyday procedures.

At the Thank You Antibiotics stand, we asked visitors to thank antibiotics for helping them and their loved ones recover from infection, or enabling them to have safe surgery and other antibiotic-dependent procedures. Their thank you messages were attached to our polytunnel frame with ribbon. The Thank You Antibiotics messages cascading through the polytunnel created an enthralling sensory experience for our young visitors, who especially loved writing or drawing their messages. We collected a total of 272 thank you messages and illustrations over the weekend.

The final stop for visitors was the Antibiotic Citizen Engagement (ACE) science project stand. Budding school-aged citizen scientists were equipped with a clipboard and a short survey and asked to interview their parents or adult family members about their antibiotic usage. We collected nearly 200 completed surveys over the weekend! Many families plan to share the ACE booklets and surveys with their children's schools, and we hope that our young scientists will become ACE ambassadors.

If you or your school are interested in learning more about the ACE science project and taking part, learn more here.

Among the many highlights of the weekend were the engaging conversations with families about antibiotics and how our activities fit into the research our teams are doing.

It was wonderful on my tenth year to see Festival visitors of all ages enjoy our activities and take part with such enthusiasm.

Rakhee Parmar is Executive Assistant to Professor Alison Holmes and Engagement Co-ordinator at the Fleming Initiative.