Every year our POW Ambassadors are offered a behind the scenes tour of Kings College Cambridge due to our close links to the outreach team there. They don’t usually work with primary….but they genuinely look forward to us coming!

Ellie and her student Ambassador guides take the children into areas of the college that the public rarely get to see. We constantly walked through ‘Private – no entry’ signs to see what life at the college is really like. Our Ambassador guides were brilliant, mixing knowledge of the history with their own experience of studying there. The questions never stopped!

And what is the big takeaway? They all want to go to University? Well, maybe, but no, not that. The biggest impact was on their sense of self; they felt welcome there. They were treated like they were new students being shown around their new home. Wherever they end up in later life, they have that experience of ‘that is a place where I fit in’. And THAT is what we were aiming for.

Then after a fantastic lunch in the great hall (think Hogwarts with a multicultural cafe) provided by the college, we said goodbye to Ellie and the team and transferred across to the Institute of Astronomy. Welcomed at the door by Carole Haswell, who set this whole project in motion in the beginning, we were then treated to a brilliant short lecture about the solar system by resident outreach astronomer Matt Bothwell. I don’t know how he does it but every year he adds a new graphic or way of looking at the solar system into his presentation. This latest version even has time built in for questions while we travel from the Sun to the nearest planets. The questions addressed all aspects of ‘Space’ and I’ve yet to see him fail to answer in a way that makes sense to the children.

Next came a visit to a 200 year old telescope followed by a hands on viewing of the Sun through a modern telescope. Like earlier, the children felt welcome; a place where they fit.

Then to round off the day we listened to Carole’s brief story of how a little girl from Teesside, looking up at the Moon with her Dad while Neil Armstrong was stood on it, became one of the leading astronomers in the world. Her work on exoplanets has been trailblazing in a world where he idea of actually proving their existence is barely twenty years old. The questions sparked lots of really personal questions that showed how much her talk had made the children think about their own motivations and futures.

‘Don’t let anyone tell you, you can’t do something when you know you can.’

And then we had to leave. Full of inspiration yes, but more than that, feeling like it was a place where the children belong.

And that would be that, homeward bound….until we had a bit of an overheating problem on the bus engine. It meant a stop at an OK Diner while the brilliant bus crew and some local colleagues put everything to rights. Can’t say it dampened spirits much….