Engineering comes to life with the Play House
Over the last 12 months, we have visited numerous recipients of our Millennium Point Charitable Trust Small Grant programme to see how they are progressing with their respective projects.
Our visit to Montgomery Primary Academy school in Sparkbrook, Birmingham, proved particularly insightful and interesting.
The school welcomed grant recipients The Play House, a leading theatre-in-education charity making participatory drama for children and young people in the midlands.
Daughters of Invention
The Play House delivered their interactive theatre project “Daughters of Invention”, funded through a grant from the Millennium Point Charitable Trust in 2019.
“Daughters of Invention” is an educational performance based on engineering history. The project brings real-life engineers together with actors and storytelling, designed to raise young peoples aspirations and inspire interest in engineering.
Women in Engineering
In particular, the project seeks to inspire girls into engineering and elevate the work of female engineers. The Play House brings to life the nineteenth-century Birmingham-based engineer Sarah Guppy, who, alongside being a prolific inventor was also the first woman to patent a bridge.
A unique experience
This unique experience proved beneficial to the pupils, who enjoyed a different sort of lesson, thanks to the acting skills of Play House Head of Programmes Juliet Fry and her team.
Over £400,000 grant funding has been used across a variety of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) related activities, from creating dedicated resource rooms at schools, funding learning clubs, running activity programmes and organising careers fairs encouraging girls into STEM.
We would like to thank the staff at Montgomery Primary Academy for being so welcoming to Millennium Point and our Interim CEO Abbie Vlahakis.
Millennium Point is a landmark public building and multi-award-winning events venue in the Eastside of Birmingham City centre. Profits from our commercial activity are invested by the Millennium Point Charitable Trust into projects, events and initiatives which support the growth of science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) and education in the West Midlands.
