Promoting water literacy through the WRL Open Day

There is no doubt that water is one of our most precious resources. The more the community and most importantly, the younger generation, understands about water, the stronger their desire is to protect this essential resource into the future. WRL embraced this opportunity to promote water literacy and share our knowledge during our recent WRL Open Day; highlighting the importance of water to the 820 visitors we had attend, through a range of interactive activities, with a strong emphasis on encouraging and inspiring our children.

One of our activities was a “Water Engineer for a day” passport, where children (or the young-at-heart) received a stamp at each of the models around the lab. The passport included water-related facts to increase their water knowledge. At the end of the tour, the children were awarded the title of "Water Engineer for a Day!” with a sticker. 

During the tour, in amongst our permanent flumes and displays, we had interactive mini-flumes and hands-on experiments, encouraging children and adults to comprehend water processes using their hands to engage with the models. This is a great tool to promote STEM education, assist with understanding physics, and demonstrate complex water related processes in a visual way.

All visitors were highly encouraged to ask questions, with all our staff and students keen to share their knowledge and introduce our guests to our unique workplace.

While WRL is tackling some of the most complex water engineering challenges, translating these technical ideas to a broad audience is key to sharing our water knowledge and making science and engineering accessible to everyone. At WRL we are passionate about promoting water literacy and nurturing the seeds for inspiring a future generation of water engineers and scientists.