Maths Week Ireland

Maths Week Ireland is an annual festival promoting positive attitudes towards maths and highlighting the importance of maths in our lives. It is one of four national STEM festivals. Running for 15 years it is a collaborative partnership of organisations including all the universities, institutes of technology, with professional bodies, visitor centres and more. It is coordinated by highly experienced Calmast STEM EPE centre. It engaged directly over 400,000 (2019), spreading a positive message further through traditional and social media. Events include shows, workshops, projects, competitions, taking place in city streets, prestigious venues, partner centres, in-school and online, building maths EPE capacity.
This proposal will allow further expansion of engagement and impact. The plan delivers on all of the Discover Programme goals. “Maths for All” is an important principle; we plan a number of innovative ways to reach special audiences.
Planning for post-Covid-19 world, we will develop attractive and effective online engagement that will increase access and connect schools further. We will also build on increased awareness of modelling and maths in decision-making with debate and dialogue to increase citizen engagement and engage policy makers on evidence-based decision-making.
Maths is part of STEM but also underpins most other disciplines. Reports show that success correlates with positive attitude. Successive evaluations of Maths Week have shown impact in improving attitudes towards maths.
Maths Week shows exceptional value to Discover at 35c/participant. We have responded to previous feedback and developed a strong strategic plan and we outline concrete targets for fundraising.