Rising to the challenge

None of us can quite remember when we realised that ‘The Astronautical Challenge’ (TAC) was going to become as big as it did. We had always planned to design an education project to run alongside Unlimited’s touring production ‘Mission to Mars’, a science-based theatre piece for 7–11 year olds, which we made in co-production with Polka Theatre. We do all agree that it grew very quickly, and immediately seemed very ‘right’, which probably had quite a lot to do with Dr Gail Iles.

Unlimited comprises three core artists, Clare Duffy, Jon Spooner and Chris Thorpe, and their theatre-making practice is grounded in collaboration. Before we started making Mission to Mars, we knew we needed a scientist to help us get it right. One web search later and Jon had found Dr Gail, a particle physicist and astronaut instructor with the European Space Agency. She replied positively and enthusiastically to the first exploratory email and within no time was sparking so many ideas we could have made six shows. It was clear we had to be even more ambitious with our ideas in order to do the project justice and so TAC was born.

TAC empowers participants by casting them as heroes in their own version of a developing story by successfully completing challenges incorporating many parts of the curriculum. It is about the potential impact children can have on the world around them. It is a genuinely innovative and creative response to well-documented concerns that the teaching of science in primary schools is losing ground and failing to inspire pupils with commitment to study scientific subjects at a higher level.

A complex project, it required strong leadership to unite a diverse team of individuals and partner organisations. We worked with: Coney (in devising and co-authoring a series of scenarios and challenges); Radiowaves (who provided a secure online networking platform for pupils to share their work); two lead scientists – Dr Gail and Dr Andy Newsam (an astrophysicist at Liverpool John Moores University and Director, National Schools Observatory Project); twelve artists and five theatres. Our logistical challenge was to raise funds (thank you Arts Council England, Ernest Cook Trust and Equitable Charitable Trust), engage our touring venues, recruit and inspire schools, set up Inset teacher training days and project manage the whole operation.

The first outing of Astronautical Challenge has reached nearly 500 pupils in 14 schools, with an initial investment of just over £26,000. Primary school pupils have been given the opportunity to have conversations with world-leading scientists and to ask them any question they want to about space, the universe and the world we live in. We created UNSA – Unlimited Space Agency – our very own space academy, which now has nearly 500 young graduates. Our core artists have been trained alongside real astronauts in Cologne at the European Space Agency training facility, and right now Jon is packing to go to South Africa to give a paper at the International Astronautical Congress, alongside people who run real space agencies.

A thorough evaluation of the project to assess options for the future has revealed that TAC is well positioned to enjoy a future life as an independent project. We are planning to continue to make it available, and to scale the project up by rolling it out across digital platforms.

So, thank you Gail – but then they don’t call her Dr Awesome for nothing.