Back Down to Earth - Expanding D2E to Scotland and Northern Ireland

The D2E project is a highly successful, STFC-funded programme delivering high quality astronomy education resources in the form of meteorite loan boxes, online lesson plans and an online asteroid/comet impact simulator (available in 8 languages). The loan scheme is currently run from Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Wales (AC-NMW) in Cardiff, from where it reaches ~5,000 students/yr (ages 10-16) and ~3,000 general public/yr through outreach - figures have been fairly constant since the D2E scheme started in mid-2007. Specific events, targeted at hard-to-reach audiences engage significant numbers annually (e.g. Beddgelert meteorite festival, N. Wales, Sept. 2009 to mark the 60th anniversary of the fall). We also made good use of national initiatives such as the BBC Stargazing Live in January 2011, 2012 and again in 2013 when D2E loan boxes were used extensively to support Stargazing Live programmes via outreach events at AC-NMW (National Museum Cardiff) and across Wales reaching c. 5,000 people during that week. We would like to extend this successful formula, and cascade our experience to new partners. By providing additional loan boxes, and teaching and management resources, we will facilitate the creation of two new loan hubs for D2E resources in Scotland and Northern Ireland, providing these countries with national centres for the scheme. These two hubs were selected as they have comparable national identities and organisations to Wales, and are run by the respective ESERO-UK Space Ambassadors (Tom Mason, Dan Hillier). Our experience in providing a national service in a small nation is of particular relevance, as is that of reaching geographically isolated and hard-to-reach communities. Part of our hard-to-reach programme includes provision of educational materials in a bilingual format, something not typically delivered by other science pubic awareness projects. For Scotland and NI, we will work with the hubs to produce Scots/Irish Gaelic versions of the key educational resource materials. We will share our gained experience with our partners, enabling them to be well equipped and supported to run their own schemes, and work effectively with STFC researchers. Crucially, it will extend the reach of the project beyond the current regions of Wales to schools/museums who have expressed an interest (i.e. AC-NMW sent loan boxes to Edinburgh, Exeter, Bristol and Salisbury in 2012). Armagh Planetarium helps to disseminate information on STFC-funded research carried out at the Armagh Observatory, such as the newly discovered populations of small satellites orbiting the giant planets, and the processes by which comets decay into meteoroid streams, but do not currently hold handling collections. This project will therefore not only provide much needed resources for public engagement at the Planetarium, but also a way of engaging audiences throughout Northern Ireland who may not be able to visit the Planetarium themselves. The Royal Observatory Edinburgh visitor centre highlights a broad range of STFC-funded research, and in particular the work of the Astronomy Technology Centre (ATC). New mini meteorite loan kits produced for ROE will also support the work of Dark Skies partners in Scotland. We wish to develop further our programme of hard-to-reach audience by evaluating how we might interface with national agendas such as the Child Poverty Strategy for Wales. This will be trialed initially in Wales and then evaluated to establish if a similar approach is appropriate for the two new hub areas. We have evaluated and concluded that potential risks to the project on a practical level these are low. The production of the educational materials is based on a well developed process for curriculum analysis, developing lesson plans, and identifying appropriate teachers' materials. There is therefore a clear mechanism in place to ensure the delivery of resources to the centres within the first 9 months of the project.