Funded by Beacons for Wales, Ten young people aged between 13 and 18 from the Barnardo's Neath Port Talbot Partnership spent seven days and six nights in student halls in Swansea Metropolitan University on a residential drama week. They worked with a team of drama practitioners and technical students to produce their own piece of work based on the theme of 'Our Place in the Future'. The week began on Saturday 24th July 2010 and the performance took place on Friday July 30th.

ICoN - Italian Culture on the Net is a Consortium of Italian Universities (Bari, Catania, Genoa, Milan State University, Padua, Parma, Pavia, Perugia for Foreigners, Pisa, Rome "La Sapienza", Rome "Tor Vergata", Roma Tre, Salerno, Siena for Foreigners, Turin, Venice, the Free University of Language and Communication IULM of Milano, the University of Naples
"L'Orientale", and the Superior School for Academic Studies "S. Anna" of Pisa) whose mission is the promotion and diffusion of Italian language and culture worldwide, using telematic media.

Our hands-on activity aims to convey that cutting-edge science is often hidden in plain sight, and accessible to people of all age groups and backgrounds. This is exemplified nowhere better than with Graphene, the world’s first two dimensional material, which was considered not to exist in a stable form. Graphene was first isolated only in 2004 by Manchester scientists Geim and Novoselov who were awarded the Nobel Prize for their efforts. Our activity allows just about anyone to make their own graphene with nothing more than a piece of graphite (pencil lead) and sticky tape like ‘Scotch’ tape. Indeed, this is identical to the way graphene was first isolated and now produced in high-tech clean room laboratories around the world. With this activity, we endeavour to allow people of all walks of life to experience the latest advances in science, and we reward their efforts with a chocolate Nobel medal!

Chemistry is evil, malicious, nasty and malevolent?

In the context of the "International Year of Chemistry" celebrated last year, an entertaining play about the story of the periodic table of the elements has been written and successful performed in Jaén-Spain as a vehicle for highlighting the contribution of some researchers to the development of science, chemistry in particular. Thus, the story has brought alive, among other characters, Marie Curie who discovered two radioactive elements and scientists Dimitri Mendeleev and Lothar Meyer, who, working independently, put in order all the known elements and thereby facilitated the study of their properties, leading to the establishment of Periodic Table of the Elements that we all know and study. To enable the play to be represented and adapted to the characteristics of students in all schools who request it, the University of Jaen has edited the text of the play along with the recording of the first performance.