First off, my Leadership-in-Action was stressful to organise to say the least. As my exchange semester in Japan started in April and went on until August, I could only afford to complete my LiA during the time after Christmas break – between late January and March. After sending hundreds of emails to places, I was starting to lose hope; until finally I received a very enthusiastic email in my inbox one December evening – from the University of Cambridge.

I was unsure specficially what direction to take in my LiA. I knew that I was passionate in education, and looking at helping others engage themselves and influence people in considering starting or continuing education. I then came to the conclusion that I wanted to involve myself in targeting people of all ages (though mostly young people) who have not had the opportunity to think critically about the world around them. The University of Cambridge organises the Cambridge Festival every year around March. This was a match made in heaven for my LiA and my circumstances!

The Cambridge Festival explores prominent problems in today’s society through different themes – power, society, health, environment and discovery. The talk features many seminars, workshops and lectures which aim to provoke attendees to think of the world more critically – or at least understand it more and take an interest why certain things are the way they are! The Festival attracts many people around the world and locally, as schools and students fly in or attend virtually. This year, across the over 360 different events, over 132,000 people were engaged both in-person and virtually.

Throughout my LiA I worked alongside a dynamic team in making this a reality. I joined this team at a crucial time as the office was busy finalising speakers, venues, workshops – as well as restructuring the staff team. I helped finalise some plans, but more importantly, I was in charge of organising the Cambridge Festival Family Weekend, which saw the engagement of over 1000 KS2 and KS3 children during two school days (students between 7 and 14 years old). My role focused heavily on organising workshops for these events.

Because of the nature of the project, I completed my LiA in 8 weeks.

Week 1

The first week was my introduction to Cambridge, the staff team and, more importantly, the Festival itself. I spent this week introducing myself to the panellists and collating information. I spent a lot of time in the office helping with admin work and attending meetings.

Week 2

This week was quite eventful for setting up future work in my LiA. I attended training sessions on public outreach to make sure I was able to correctly lead. I visited the main venue for the Family Weekend, which was a major shopping centre in the centre of Cambridge; the Grand Arcade. I met with the centre’s security team to finalise dates, details, numbers – and asked them to accommodate our events. The rest of the week was filled with brainstorming different things that would be needed in the events – whiteboards, table cloths; but also more technical things such as graphics.

Week 3

This week saw me taking on more roles. Firstly, I was put onto a team to organise ‘CAST Day’ (Cambridge Academy for Science & Technology – the venue it was held in) for primary and secondary school students as part of the Family Weekend. The Day would emphasise medical and biological research in efforts of inspiring students to consider studying STEM. My role was to liaise with the venue and the collaborators.

Secondly, I was informed of organising a stall at a primary school’s STEM Day. I was required to come up with activities to engage students. I decided to focus on physics and engineering – of course, this had to be electrical engineering!

Week 4

I joined members of the team in their outreach days, in which we ventured to different schools and had sessions with the students alongside experts in the field – typically PhD students. These sessions were hands on and were aimed to promote the Cambridge Festival to students and schools. Furthermore, the work students submitted would be put on display at the Festival. These sessions were different to regular schooling – they were hands on and encouraged students to ask questions relating to science; I helped in delivering some of these workshops.

This week also marked when the Cambridge Festival’s first bookings; within 24 hours we received over 4000 bookings across all events. I worked closely with the team to finalise venues and complete a marketing plan to push the Cambridge Festival locally and nationally. I further finalised the activities I was to give at the school’s STEM Day:

• Static electricity demonstration using a balloon
• Build your own circuit using wires and bulbs
• Investigating conductors & insulators
  
  

Week 5

This week definitely had the most amount of work, Majorly, I gave my demonstrations at the primary school’s STEM Day which was a great success (at least I hope so – a lot of the children were interested in seeing how the light bulbs lit up)! Many students from the school and the area had the opportunity to learn the basics of electricity – and were hopefully impacted to consider electronic engineering in the future.

A lot of finalising of different plans took place this week. Finalising of rooms and venues in the Grand Arcade after some logistical errors and with more exhibits being on offer during the Festival, finalising of CAST Day, moving between different venues both in the university itself and the local area, etc. There was a final push for appealing to the locality, and so I was tasked with organising posters to be put up around the area for the Family Weekend.

This week tested my leadership capabilities the most. In some instances in finalising details, I had to take decisions that I never had the opportunity to before; and these decisions would greatly impact the running of the events on offer. I had a final following up with different exhibitors and requesting their risk assessments I advance of their events taking place

Week 6+

As mentioned before, I was required to spend 8 weeks in my LiA; mostly to oversee the running of the events I planned out.

After taking a brief break of a few days, the Festival was underway. Alongside the events I organised, I also volunteered to help moderate and run some of the other speaker events that the Festival organised.

A major milestone of mine was seeing the success of CAST Day; something I spent weeks working on alongside a team. Around a thousand different students came and enjoyed the different medical and biological workshops on display. Receiving positive feedback validated the work done for this.

The Family Weekend events in the Grand Arcade then took place; which I was solely responsible for running alongside the exhibitors. I was on hand the entire day to manage the running of the workshop, as well as an exhibit of the Chornobyl Dogs. Across the two days, around a hundred different families came to participate in the workshops aimed at engineering (bridge building) and sustainability (reusing old clothing to make new clothing).

Everything went smoothly until a protest took place outside the engineering workshop; protesting that the engineering programme was funded by large oil companies. This was certainly an experience and something I was not remotely ready to deal with. However, the situation was defused by simply letting the protest be carried out in peace.

Finally, before leaving to go back to Ireland, I assisted in running another large event in the University which was also aimed at children. This again offered many hands-on activities and talks to children which aimed to inspire children to engage with STEM later in their lives. This event attracted the most – with over 1000 different people attending the different activities.

To sum up

The LiA taught me to be self-sufficient and to take a proactive role in the work I carried out rather than wait and be directed. It taught me to always go the extra mile, and because of this, I became much more obsessed with ensuring all of my activities were planned correctly.

The LiA taught me to be okay with pressure and failure. I didn’t mention the different aspects that went wrong, the failed events that didn’t take place, the mistakes that were made the day of the event happening. It also didn’t talk about how I had to constantly be on my toes during the running of my events too – especially dealing with a protest!

Moving to another country for a short time and organising accommodation, as well as getting ingrained within the team was an invaluable experience. I also managed to get involved with student life within the university. The LiA taught me how to be a self-starter and how to be comfortable in unknown waters. I am truly grateful for everything I’ve learned in this short journey.