Description
During the pandemic, and particularly during lockdowns, many youth groups struggled to keep meetings going and to keep their members engaged. Girlguiding was no exception, with leaders finding it incredibly challenging to adapt to online meetings, and girls losing interest as a result. The Girlguiding programme had recently undergone a major overhaul: one of the badges updated, in collaboration with the RAS, was the new Space interest badge. Earning this badge involves learning how to find north, learning to recognise constellations, and finding out about other objects in the sky.
To help adult leaders struggling to fill their virtual programmes, give girls the opportunity to compete their Space badges, and provide some inspiration (as well as a bit of entertainment!), I began offering virtual planetarium shows to Brownie groups run by a few friends. Over six months I delivered 42 planetarium shows, along with the help of some colleagues to cope with demand. Together we delivered 60 shows, reaching more than 1400 Brownies across the country, resulting in a low-cost outreach programme with a much broader geographical reach than we could normally achieve with our fixed-location observatory and planetarium at the university.
In this contribution I will discuss the successes and challenges of the programme, the lessons learned, results of our evaluation, and how we harnessed the power of storytelling to engage our audience.
