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STEAM FEST, SIBUR's first online science festival, drew over 14,000 participants

17 february 2021

More than 14,000 attendees, including students from grades 1 through 11, their parents and teachers took part in the first STEAM FEST online science festival hosted by SIBUR on January 29 through February 14, 2021 simultaneously in three cities: Nizhnevartovsk, Muravlenko, and Blagoveshchensk (Republic of Bashkortostan). The project was implemented as part of SIBUR's Formula for Good Deeds social investment program. It included over 100 training events geared toward teaching children relevant applied skills and competencies that are so needed in today's world.

The festival consisted of dozens of lectures, interactive sessions and master classes focusing on both science including physics, chemistry, and mathematics, as well as on many other topics: public speaking, programming, website design, rope games, puzzles, building tubular polyhedrons (tubular 3D polyhedron models), and origami. In addition, the festival’s attendees were offered a unique opportunity to take online tours. Elementary school students got to visit the Nastya and Nikita publishing house, and everyone was invited to go on a tour of SIBUR’s facilities and of JINR’s NICA collider in Dubna.

High school students who would soon be expected to decide on their future occupation had a series of meetings with professional experts as part of the festival’s extensive career guidance program. The students were able to meet with and learn about the most popular occupations directly from representatives of these professions, including  some that are quite rare, such as an ecologist, a programmer, an animation artist, an ocean scientist, a dentist, a chef, and an aircraft designer. In terms of assistance with choosing a future profession, they could also take advantage of sessions with a professional psychologist who helped them do a career-choice self-diagnosis. This was quite useful and effective, too.

Attendees of all ages showed keen interest in participating in family science quizzes about petrochemistry, great scientific discoveries and gadgets, developed by the creators of the Smart Cities project. In the Art segment of the festival, the focus was on discussing popular science books and films presented as part of the FUNK Contemporary Science Film Festival.

Olga Brichkina-Kasyanova, a 6th grade student from Blagoveshchensk: I had the opportunity to attend ten different classes on different days of the festival, and each of them turned out to be quite special for me. I enjoyed everything, including the topics that we studied and the way our teachers explained them to us. Usually, I am not very keen on studying on weekends, but this was quite different here! The festival was excellent, and I'd like to say big thanks to the organizers for it.

Nailya Bayazitova from Blagoveshchensk: My two children, aged 8 and 11, both took part  in the STEAM FEST. It just happens so that my youngest is a great fan of all kinds of scientific experiments, and the eldest is more attracted to designing and building things. And so, each of them was able to home in on a master class of their liking. We, as parents, also really enjoyed our time at the fest. We were helping our youngest daughter with her classes a little and just got carried away. Fascinating science is really addictive!

Alexey Petrusha, Director of the Belozerny Gas Processing Plant at JSC SiburTyumenGaz: After the tour of SIBUR was over, I had a great opportunity to interact with the students online, to explain my career path to them, and to answer their questions. I really enjoyed doing it! I would be extremely happy if it turned out that I was able to help some of them discover their calling or future profession, because this was the main objective of us having such a meeting. In turn, may I also note the very serious and thoughtful attitude the students showed toward choosing their future occupation. This kind of grown-up approach can’t fail to make me feel elated, because some of these children may one day become our future employees or perhaps even our company’s executives.

Stanislav Kasparov, Director of Business Support Services in the regions of SIBUR's presence: The pandemic forced us to make adjustments to these events’ format. Many of them had to be moved online. But as we take stock of the results of the festival, we can state with confidence that, in this case, not only has the online mode failed to limit our capacity, but on the contrary, it has surprisingly helped us expand our capabilities for involving as many participants in our educational events as possible. This is yet another proof that SIBUR's efforts to promote science, something it does year in and year out in the regions where it operates, are growing in scale and are reaching new heights.