This year, for the first time I got the opportunity to head over the UK Big Bang Fair in Birmingham. I had been meaning to try and get over for few years, but an opportunity arose this year to help out the Raspberry Pi Foundation so thought, why not.

What is the UK Big Bang Fair?

Big Bang Fairs are science/tech fairs for school ages kids. They are dotted up and down the UK (sometimes under different names). They are excellent as include exhibitors from industry and also usually include regional heats for the National Science + Engineering Competition. Winners of those heats get invited over the finals at the UK Big Bang Fair in Birmingham in mid March each year.

Over the 4 days the fair was running at the NEC, over 70,000 people came through the doors, most being schoolkids and families.

Space!

I was there from the Thursday-Saturday volunteering with the Raspberry Pi Foundation with Astro Pi on the UK Space Agency stand.

We had set up 4 Raspberry Pis with Sense HATs, 3 of which were set up with the excellent Pixel Art activity, while one was set up with a humidity reading program.

Over the 3 days I was there, we were constantly inundated with kids! Was great to hear 95% of them were well aware who Tim Peake was and they thought it was pretty cool they could be creating code that could end up in space!

Plus, of course I ended up in one of the spacesuits on the Saturday!

Here's @gbaman1 giving @astro_timpeake a run for his money at the @BigBangFair on the @astro_pi @spacegovuk stand ? pic.twitter.com/rWnVFxbR2c

— Lisa Mather (@elsie_m_) March 19, 2016