Derry won big At STEMies Awards
St Mary’s College, Derry (pictured) swept the board at the recent Big Video Challenge STEMies awards. The event was hosted in Brunswick Moviebowl and welcomed almost 250 school pupils from across the north to showcase films they had made on STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects and digital careers.
Scooping four awards, including Best Overall video, Best Digital Careers video, Best Educational video and Best Live video, St Mary’s won a trip to Google in Dublin and the star prize of trip to CERN in Switzerland – the European organisation for nuclear research and home to the Hadron Collider.
The awards were organised as part of CultureTECH festival and asked pupils from Key Stages 2-5 to produce a five minute video. Almost 100 videos were submitted and judging was based on creativity, educational content and originality.
Rachel McDermott of CultureTECH said, “The Big Video Challenge is a creative educational competition for young people, designed to help them develop creative and digital media skills, whilst engaging with core subjects in new ways. The entries were simply sensational and it’s great to see such creative talent live and well in our schools. Special thanks to Brunswick Moviebowl for letting us take over one of the screens as it really brought the videos to life. Huge congratulations to St Mary’s and indeed all the schools that took part – we can’t wait to see what they come up with next year!”
The Big Video Challenge is part of the CultureTECH festival. Featuring over 200 separate events and sessions, CultureTECH is Northern Ireland’s largest technology and creative industries event, which brings together participants from the arts, culture and technology sectors for 7 days each year. Over 40,000 people – including 16,000 young people – took part in this year’s festival. For more information on the Big Video Challenge visit: http://www.bigvideochallenge.com
The Big Video Challenge has been funded in part by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL), with additional support from School Employer Connections, University of Ulster, Department for Employment and Learning and the Northern Ireland Space Office.
