An opportunity to get up close to real scientists and ask them any questions.

With the ample space available in our pop-up shop and a fold-up stage that the John Lewis store next door kindly lent us, we did something never tried before by us - live science presentations in a shopping centre!

This approach was particularly useful when hosting school visits from primary and secondary schools across South Wales in our shop. It allowed us to give welcome presentations and introductions into microbiology, science and health, and briefly explain the activities and exhibits to be explored during the visits.

At the end of each school visit we hosted a quiz to test the pupils’ knowledge and to see what they had learnt from their experience. But it also gave us the chance to probe further into what they had enjoyed, and had not enjoyed, and whether they were more interested in microbes and science after their visit. Most importantly, it provided a stage (literally) for pupils to ask our scientists any questions - about aspects of what they had seen and done during and about science and health in general.

We even ran a detailed Q&A session for Year 9 pupils getting ready for their GCSEs and gave them some career advice, especially those who might be interested in science and helath-related topics.

Everyone can be a scientist!

Our live stage also allowed us to introduce the idea of “citizen science” to our visitors, in a presentation given by our MSc student Pouya Sadeghzadeh-Rahimi who talked about his research on the importance of environmental surveillance to monitor the spread of antimicrobial resistance.

Each pupil coming to our pop-up shop received a small container and a pipette, for them to collect a water sample near where they live, to be picked up from their schools by the Superbugs team several days later. Pouya would then process those water samples in the lab at Swansea University, isolate bacteria and test them for the presence of a range of antimicrobial resistance genes.

We thus were able to involve a diverse group of members of the public in actual research, by collecting environmental samples from across South Wales.

Stay tuned for the results from this work!

➡️ Pop-Up Shop 2025

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