A Big Biology Day at the Sandford Mill Museum.

This year’s biology week kicked off with a series of activities taking place across the country and for the first time, “A big Biology Day” came to Essex.  Big Biology Day is a one day science fair that celebrates the life sciences with hands on activities, crafts and displays bringing together a number of biological organisations and individuals under one roof for all the family to enjoy. The initiative was launched by the East Anglia branch of the Society of Biology in 2012 during the first ever Biology week and has seen an exponential growth over the years with other regions embracing “A Big Biology Day”.

The Essex fair was organised by myself, in collaboration with Chemlsford city council at the Sandford Mill museum.

Dr Geoff Bowles, curator of science at the Sandford Mill Museum welcomed the initiative saying, activities at the museum have been predominantly focussed on the physical sciences and it’s great to incorporate a life science activity in the calendar.

Education officer at the museum Rebecca Fitzgerald also commended the fair for coming to Essex at a time where the primary school science curriculum is focussed more on the natural sciences as a great way to engage pupils and their families.  

Activities on the day included the hunger games from the physiological society, the Plant/product matching quiz from the Cambridge biology day team and dissecting owl pellets by Jonathan Forgham.

Although there is a strong engineering prescence in Chelmsford, there is a natural science activity gap within Essex and Hephzi found the need to introduce the Big Biology Day fair to the region to bridge this gap.

Join us next year for another Big Biology Day. Save the date. 2nd August 2015.