Past training workshops

The public engagement and schools team at Nowgen have run a range of training workshops for researchers. They have given researchers practical support to help them communicate, engage and involve the public and patients. We have trained over 200 researchers since 2003 and we are planning more training courses in the future. We are keen to share best practice and encourage more researchers to engage and involve the public. Our past workshops have included:

Workshops for scientists within the University of Manchester

These workshops focussed on helping scientists devise fun activities to enable them to engage with secondary school pupils and family audiences more effectively.

Workshops for early-career researchers (working with Vitae)

These training workshops were designed to provide an introduction to the field of public engagement. One of the workshops was about encouraging creativity and the other helped researchers consider the range of successful approaches that can be used to engage with the public.

Workshops supported by the Beacon for Public Engagement

Nowgen was funded by the Beacon to run an ‘Ideas workshop’ to help researchers devise activities at a public event for the Manchester Science Festival. The scientists devised some exceptionally good activities and you can download their ideas here: Activity sheets

Training researchers to run laboratory workshops for schools

We have trained over 30 researchers to led workshops for post-16 students within The Nowgen Centre. The researchers developed a range of transferable skills.

Communication Workshops for Geneticists.

These workshops followed two major surveys of genetics professionals that showed a strong need for this type of training. The surveys were conducted by members of British Society for Human Genetics (BSHG) and the Genetics Society. Nowgen addressed some of the needs identified in these surveys, by delivering a programme of communication workshops that gave participants practical skills, ideas and resources to help them engage with non-experts.