Getting to the STEM of careers in the BBC

Marvin McKenzie and dozens of BBC STEM Ambassadors bring school subjects alive for hundreds of school pupils each year by showing them science, technology, engineering and maths at work in the BBC. Marvin reflects on the latest STEM Challenge season.

'I felt inspired by all our staff who’d be able to gain valuable insights working with young people'

“Well, this isn’t gonna be an easy one, Marv,” were my first thoughts when I sat down to consider what I was setting out to achieve with BBC volunteers across the UK.

But 595 miles and 32 schools later I’m at the other side of what has been one of the most rewarding periods during my time working with BBC Outreach.

I manage the BBC’s volunteer community of STEM ambassadors, who are members of staff sharing their skills and expertise to help young people gain a greater understanding of STEM careers in the BBC.

They are some of the coolest people with some of the coolest roles, yet the average 12-14 year old has very little idea that their science, technology, engineering and maths subjects could lead to jobs like theirs in the media.

In each city where we hold a STEM challenge, we invite around 10 schools to join us for a morning of careers exploration. As the STEM events had become so popular, we - well, I - agreed to do a mini tour of the UK for October.

When I first said it out loud, travelling the UK to spread the gospel of STEM sounded amazing in principle - a real opportunity to get the message out to schools that the BBC is a place for all. I felt inspired by all our staff who’d be able to gain valuable insights working with young people.

Planning for events with over 30 schools, recruiting the volunteers to support the students, and then finding spaces to deliver events of this scale, all to the BBC’s quality hallmarks, seemed a big challenge.  Each site visit gives the students around 10 STEM challenges, including weather forecasting, news deployment planning, budgeting for a TV channel, coding, user-testing games and apps, design and engineering, and sound effects.  Every venue gives its own special flavour of the output and skills on site. 

So, first stop Birmingham. A great turn out of STEM ambassadors, plus special presentations from the city's resident Digital Guerrillas.   Birmingham really set the standard for what we would go on to deliver at the next venues.

The Blue Room team continued their wonderful commitment to hard-to-reach audiences and went the extra (500) miles to make sure we had a mobile Blue Room set up in Glasgow matching our offer to the schools in England.

The BBC STEM Ambassadors are a truly amazing group of people, and so, so inspiring. Using their own career experiences, they each design and deliver practical challenges for the students to work on.  

Thanks to BBC STEM ambassadors from Glasgow, London, Wood Norton, Birmingham and Salford, and with the brilliant Nick Wyatt & Sukhi Nagra all keeping things running logistically-smoothly, I’m pleased to say Outreach volunteers delivered some of the best youth engagement activities I have seen since being at the BBC.

As much as it was a real reward to see BBC mentors sharing their skills engaging with young people, hearing the young people’s thoughts of the BBC and what they could do here was amazing.

A teenage boy in Glasgow said to me: "Hey Marvin, just wanted to say this is brilliant I wish I knew about this before"; a teenage girl in Birmingham said: “Wow this is so cool, you must really love your job.”

I smiled broadly and said, “Yep, I love it.” Bringing BBC staff together with hard-to reach-audiences and showing both sides that they have loads to teach each other - what’s not to love about that!

BBC Outreach & Corporate Responsibility brings the BBC closer to its audiences - particularly those audiences we have identified as harder to reach - with face-to-face activity, community support and staff volunteering.