Jessica Stanley
Project Coordination
I’ve worked on a variety of public engagement with science / maker education projects with Science Gallery Dublin and Makerversity Amsterdam, mostly as coordinator or researcher. Here are some highlights.
MAKESHOP at Northern Ireland Science Festival
In 2017, while working as coordinator of MAKESHOP (a shop and makerspace in Dublin that sadly doesn’t exist any more), we partnered with Northern Ireland Science Festival and opened a popup makerspace in a shopping centre in Belfast. With support from Matrix NI, we turned an empty shop unit into an open workshop space for anyone to visit, and ran free workshops with local schools
MAKESHOP: free workshops for schools
For Science Week in 2016, we setup a popup makerspace in Killinarden Community Centre, Tallaght, with funding from Science Foundation Ireland. Over the course of the week, we ran free soldering and DIY robot workshops with hundreds of local kids. A successful application to a Google funding scheme for computer science education also funded us to travel to DEIS schools (schools where the majority of students are at risk of educational disadvantage) and run free workshops with over 1000 students. The overall goal was to spark students’ interest in making with electronics, and build confidence in STEM skills.
TRAUMA
TRAUMA was a Science Gallery Dublin exhibition exploring how trauma affects the brain, the body, and society more broadly. In my role as researcher I worked with connected artists with scientists to work collaboratively on exhibition artworks, and co-produced the exhibit ‘Memory Laundering’ in collaboration with the exhibition designers and neuroscience researchers.