Submitted by J. Hudson on Wed, 27/03/2024 - 09:59
We work with a great bunch of people across the Vet School, Hospital and Research Communities. No better example of this was recently with the fab work put in by many of our colleagues working and giving up their spare time to help with the Vet School’s activities at the Cambridge Festival.
We opened our doors on Saturday 16 March to over 250 visitors who came along to our family friendly activities and talks. It was a beautiful sunny day and we had children running around outside in the sunshine hunting for bats in the trees and Tasmanian Devils in the traps. In the staff room we had stands set up with our clinical skills area, extracting DNA from strawberries and paper / colouring activities about antibodies and viruses, not to mention the two fun and informative talks from Dr David Williams and Dr Andrew Chan in the afternoon – both talks were very popular with our visitors!
On Monday 18 March and Tuesday 19 March we opened our doors again, this time to school children who enjoyed workshops that included lots of hands-on interaction. We had three activities going on simultaneously three times on both Monday and Tuesday – one in our clinical skills lab learning about the different roles in a Veterinary Hospital, the second activity was learning about the health of a horse up at Merton Hall Farm and the third activity helped the young people learn about x-rays and what different animals look like from looking inside their bodies!
A parent who attended the workshop events with their child said:
"My child loved every activity, all of which far exceeded our expectations. Special kudos to the team at the Veterinary School, who, as we heard, have hosted this event for the first time - they clearly put in a lot of work, and their efforts were outstanding! The children got to work with live animals and, even at their young age, got a very realistic impression about what studying for a degree in veterinary medicine entails."
The whole week was a whirlwind of fun and activity! We look forward to next year!