The first (of many) Tomorrow’s Engineers Live conference

Jul 15, 2022

This month EngineeringUK hosted the first (of many) ever Tomorrow’s Engineers Live conference.  

Events like this are crucial for the engineering outreach community and the day provided a much-missed opportunity to meet face to face to discuss challenges, share insight and collaborate. 

Dr Hilary Leevers, Chief Executive of EngineeringUK, said:  

"I am very happy to be here in person and continue to build strong relationships and connections. It is also very satisfying to see the appetite to learn, share and for people to say what they are finding hard, what they need to do better, as well as sharing top tips that are working"

Highlights from the day included:

• The theme of being consistent in the core messages we use when we approach young people 
• The thread of inclusion throughout the day. The need to think about the different groups of young people we work with and how we relate and learn from each other 
• The huge appetite from primary and special educational needs schools for engineering outreach activities (particularly from specialist schools for children on the autistic spectrum) and how we need to adapt and work more effectively with them. Also, thinking beyond outreach activities and providing support around interview readiness and assessment guidance 
• Early data to suggest face to face activities are better, however digital delivery works too and the work that needs to be done around which is best, in which situation 
• How to help SMEs to participate more easily, ideas like buddying and developing smaller, more manageable scale (yet effective) outreach activities 
• Finally, understanding the scale of need and how we need to value each other and work together as effectively as we possibly can 

How can we support this? 

The Tomorrow Engineers Code launched in October 2020 supports collaboration in the engineering outreach community. The Code is a commitment to work toward common goals, to increase the number and diversity of young people entering engineering careers. 

Any organisation with UK operations that funds, designs and/or delivers engineering outreach activities is invited to become a Signatory and it’s free to join.  

Every year Signatories are asked for feedback in an annual check-in, to help understand the support that is needed to improve the collective impact of The Code. 

This year, there was a very strong desire from Signatories to have a mechanism to connect with each other, from this a new tool has been created called Code Connect, launching this Autumn. 

Code Connect allows you to search by organisation, its size, sector, type of engineering outreach (primary, secondary etc) and more. The tool also provides a function to request to connect and we will be sharing more information about this tool very soon. 

A big thank you to everyone who attended the first (of many) Tomorrow’s Engineering Live conference, and we are looking forward to working together and using our collective impact.