All the fun of the 2014 Imperial Festival

Record numbers of visitors joined staff and students for the annual celebration of the best science and arts on offer from Imperial College London.

Last weekend, more than 12,000 public and alumni visitors descended on Imperial’s South Kensington campus to enjoy the interactives, workshops, tours, talks and performances on offer at the 2014 Imperial Festival. What started as a relatively modest pilot project in 2012 to explore how Imperial College London might share its research with more people in new ways has now evolved into a large-scale and prominent annual fixture in the College’s calendar.

Support from mainstream media suggests that the event has grown into something significant for audiences from outside College as well, with the Guardian describing it as “a fascinating event” and the Londonist observing that “whoever programmed this glorious beast must have used hyper-dimensional graph paper”. While the Festival team is still wondering whether such an organisational tool would help or hinder plans for future public programming, we bring you a first summary of what took place last weekend:

Less than 24 hours after the final guests left the last reception for graduation, the College had transformed itself with a Festival facelift, as new signage, 1,500 balloons, 1.3km of bunting and a small army of marquees went up around the Queen’s Lawn. By Thursday evening, over 40 hands-on research exhibits were ready to welcome the 200 VIPs who arrived for the Festival launch, which this year began with a double act by President & Rector Sir Keith O’Nions and Dr Mirko Kovac, Department of Aeronautics, who got the Festival off to a flying start with a demonstration of flying robots.

“I don’t think any of us ever dreamed the Festival would become so popular in just three years,” said Sir Keith. “I know it simply couldn’t happen without the hours of support, creative thinking and hard work from so many of our staff and students, who give up so much time to make sure the event goes smoothly. I would like to thank everyone who was involved, for everything you did to help the College welcome so many people to campus and to celebrate the work that we do. Another great success.”

The next day, Festival spaces were turned over to our first bookable schools event for local students, and then on Friday evening, staff and students were on stand-by as the Festival opened its doors to the public for an evening of festivities. This was followed on Saturday by the Alumni Reunion, which later combined with the families’ day to provide a packed afternoon of events for all ages.

The Festival evaluation will be published later in the summer once all feedback has been collected – there’s still time to add your own feedback. In the meantime, you can find out what we got up to by taking a look at the Festival video and flicking through the first pick of the photos.