How do you encourage kids of all ages to enjoy science, technology, engineering and maths? In my case, it’s by volunteering for a few hours of promoting Peterborough STEM Festival 2025 with slime.

The Peterborough campus of Anglia Ruskin University held a Family Day with various attractions and displays, and with the free 2025 Peterborough STEM Festival taking place on October 18th at ARU, we were invited along.

And while lots of things may have changed since holding our first STEM Festival back in 2016, the attraction of making slime is as strong as ever. In just a few hours, we estimated more than 200 children had spent some time experimenting with different amounts of common chemicals and food safe washable colourings to create their own pot of slime.

The four of us manning the stall (me, Andy, Liz and Stanley), barely had time to breath before another request came for a pot of glue, some bicarbonate of soda and shaving foam, or a particular colouring.

And amongst the fun, and managing to be the one person who turned his own hands blue (and various kids comparing me to a smurf for the rest of the day), there are a few more serious aspects to slime-making.

Kids will happily ignore their smartphones etc if you give them something interesting, fun and entertaining to do. Especially when you explain that it’s fine when things don’t work out first time, and experiments often don’t succeed straight away.

And there’s a bigger need for these kinds of events than ever before. When a lot of education has gone back to rote learning, children are being led by AI, apps and algorithms, and concerns about safety means they’re less independent, having the permission to muck around and fail can be eye-opening.

It’s tougher than ever to find suitable venues, funding and volunteers, so if you want to support Peterborough STEM Festival or any of our smaller fringe events, don’t hestitate to get involved. You don’t need a PhD to volunteer, and your hands will be back to a normal colour within a few hours.