The third Imperial Festival kicks off today with its first ever dedicated schools event.

One hundred students from a range of primary and secondary schools local to Imperial College London booked places to take part in a series of workshops and interactive displays linked to curriculum topics.

The event was put together to give students a taste of the Festival before it opens to the general public and to give them an insight into the research that goes on at the College.

Activities included hands-on science demonstrations in the Wohl Reach Out Lab, and a visit to some of the interactive exhibits in the Research Zone Marquee. The event was funded as a trial with support from alumni David and Dr Judy Dangoor for widening participation in the Festival, with the hope of expanding the number of schools invited to future Festivals.

School children at the Snot Doctor interactive exhibit

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Snot Doctors exhibit was particularly popular with the Year 3 & 7 students, who got to sink their hands into bowls of tapioca ‘snot’ under the guidance of General Nostril and Brigadier Bogey, otherwise known as Clinical Research Fellow Dr Natasha Gunawardana and Research Associate Dr Gaynor Campbell from Imperial’s National Heart and Lung Institute.

“We’ve spent the last two weeks turning 37 litres of wallpaper paste, four armfuls of newspaper and 10 metres of chicken wire into larger than life-size models of the nose,” explains Natasha. “My A* GCSE in sculpture has finally been put to good use. We now have an amazing series of multi-coloured interactives to open up conversations about our more serious jobs as researchers.”

Gaynor adds: “For me, this is a bit like secret teaching. Our hope is that after talking with us and playing with the snot, people will go away with new knowledge, without realising they were in a learning environment.

"The research we’re talking about has a very serious side, as we’re trying to find new ways of knowing what’s going on in the lungs of people with severe diseases such as cystic fibrosis or lung cancer. Very often these patients are too ill for samples to be taken from their lungs, but we are working out ways of using the specialised lining at the front of their nose instead, almost like a window into the lung. Our exhibit gives us a good way to talk about this work and we’re looking forward to meeting Festival goers of all ages over the next few days.”

The 2014 Imperial Festival takes place 9 – 10 May, with a programme for adult audiences on the evening of Friday 9 May, and family-orientated events on Saturday 10 May. Follow live updates and take part in discussions on Twitter (using hashtag #impfest) and Facebook.