2011 Round Up: Our Best Year Yet

As Christmas draws in I am doing my usual blog post summary of the year for Beauty In The Universe. Whilst you are all likely shutting down at work and securing the hatches for Christmas, as is everyone here except me, I have an extremely busy Christmas ahead of me, so it doesn't feel much like things are coming to an end for the year for me. Nonetheless, this year we stepped up our game in a big way and I've summarised our great successes below.

Our first residential trip

This year we ran our inaugural Space Camp. In partnership with Summer Fun 4 All we packed up our suitcases and cleared off to Longsleddale Outdoor Pursuits Centre in Cumbria, accompanied by the great Professor Ian Morison of Jodrell Bank. This went very, very well and I have no doubt that we will be doing it again. Photos from the weekend below:



Check out part 2 of the video diary I made (part 1 was before the children arrived):



Rocket building competition

This year we were involved in two rocket building competitions (with a third to come next year - more on that later). We staged one and judged another. Here is the one we judged at Calder Vale and Scorton schools in Lancaster:



Not only a brilliant education for the pupils, but if you watch to the end you'll see a remarkably powerful rocket built by one of the parents. It didn't even land in the same village! I'll never forget the children at Scorton and Calder Vale. It was such a great experience for me to go there and the staff and pupils were fantastic people. Photos of saying goodbye are below:



Stargazing and star parties

We staged a whole bunch of star parties at various schools, children's centres and other venues. These evenings are, for me, vital and among the best experiences we offer because no matter how good the classroom experience is, nothing can replace the experience at the eyepiece of a telescope. Below are selected photos from our events:





Great Wood School Alien Parade

Great Wood School in Morecambe was another brilliant place to go. They staged easily the most original astronomy-related event I have ever seen, an alien parade. The photographs below tell you all you need to know:



Other highlights include the arrival of Kathryn Wright. She has been an outstanding addition to Beauty In The Universe. The long-awaited project launch of Beauty In The Environment which Kathryn herself took forward and completed was a welcome event and ended a frustrating period of development. That project has been extremely challenging to get of the ground, but now that it is up and running we have several big projects ready to go in 2012.

It has also been great to develop our working relationship with UCLAN, to the point where we are now collaborating on some phenomenally exciting projects, namely Wish Upon a Star and the 24 Hour Bottle Rocket Challenge (blog post about those here). The latter project also puts us in the sights of NASA, so we expect that this project will be a huge opportunity for us to develop what we do and expand our work. These projects will be my Christmas work, and the reason I am not really shutting down personally.

2011 has been our best year yet and the successes shown signs of stopping. Expect big things from us in 2012.