Launching Greenpower Racing for schools across Norfolk

Town Close facilitated its Head of Design and Technology to develop links, host meetings and use the School’s Goblin cars for promotion which enabled the Greenpower Trust to source a $20,000 grant from Motorola for state schools in Norfolk. This allowed 25 state primary schools to access grants which covered 50% of the cost of a Goblin car. All grants were taken up. This money would not have come to Norfolk without Town Close's support of the programme. In addition, Town Close put 2 state schools in touch with other sources of grant funding.

Aims

To help every state school in Norfolk secure funding and receive expert help in order to allow children to learn engineering skills and put these into practice by racing karts driven by renewable energy sources. 

Background

Town Close hosted planning meetings with Greenpower, prospective sponsors & STEM providers.  The Town Close Head of Design and Technology ran a 'twilight' continuing professional development session for schools in the Nebula Foundation and a day at Educator Solutions for multiple other schools. Town Close provided cover for him to do this free of charge. He also found a suitable venue for a Norfolk-based racing event (Scottow Enterprise Park) and coordinated a group of sponsors for this. Four of the seven sponsoring firms were involved thanks to Town Close parents.

Resources

Our Head of Design and Technology is working with Greenpower to source funding and build a network to enable development of the category for secondary schools (F24) in Norfolk.  £41,000 has been sourced so far. The Town Close F24 car has been used to interest schools in a STEM Breakthrough twilight session at Hethel Innovation and with visitors from the UEA.

Impact

18 schools (14 state schools) took 25 cars to this event, along with an average of 6 pupils per car. The next years event involved further new entrants and this is a project that is aiming to continue and grow. 

Pupil Involvement

Each car has typical crew of 6 pupils, meaning that over 150 Year 6 children been able to benefit from this potentially life-changing experience (in the sense that this opens the door to a possible future career they may never otherwise have considered) each year.  

Frequency

This is an ongoing project.