The Sussex Network’s interaction with the local community mainly revolves around our series of talks, our STEM activities and developing relationships with the local universities. Non-members attend our talks at two locations (north and south of the county), we meet children at STEM fairs, where we have an IET stand, and at workshops that we run in schools, and we give student prizes. Our collaboration is really only in the form of our members who sit on university Industrial Liaison Boards. But perhaps that is not community collaboration in the strictest sense.


So a request from the Engineering UK Business Partnership Manager and Head of STEM Sussex to attend a discussion with a community group was intriguing, particularly since their interest was to promote the achievements of Dame Caroline Haslett, an early twentieth century electrical engineer who was made a Companion of the IEE (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_Haslett).

She was the only safety expert on an IEE committee that resulted in BS 1363, which included recommendations for the British three-pin plug and electrical ring mains.


Dame Caroline was brought up in Three Bridges, an area of Crawley with a railway station through which travellers on the Brighton line will have passed.  Her blue plaque is located in Haslett Avenue East. I had always assumed that the Avenue was named after Dame Caroline, but I’m informed that the IET archives show that the road was named after her father, a signalman on the railway (I think). The community group, the Three Bridges Forum, want to build a community space (complete with its electricity pylon) in memory of Caroline Haslett and use her as a role model for young people, particularly girls. Engineering UK in the South have also been looking for a way of using Dame Caroline as a local role model and one of our Sussex Network’s objectives is to encourage youngsters of both sexes to learn more about the role of engineers and the impact that they have on our lives and therefore think of engineering as a career. So there is an overlap of objectives and perhaps some scope for collaboration.


But as a local Network how might we help achieve our joint objectives? Well:

• It so happens that we will holding a Social Evening for members and guests on the 18th July in Crawley. So the Three Bridges Forum could bring along their exhibition boards to at least tell our members a little about Dame Caroline and her impact on our lives and what they are trying to do.

• Through STEM Sussex our STEM Ambassador volunteers run a workshop in schools about renewable energy. Perhaps a small addition to the slide set could inform pupils about an influential local engineer and help dispel the perception that engineering is a male pastime.

• Our volunteers attend many STEM fairs, including the Big Bang South East event, now held at the South of England Show Ground. School teams or individuals enter science and engineering projects that are judged by professional scientists and engineers against a number of criteria. Perhaps our Sussex Network could sponsor a Dame Caroline prize; after all, she was a Companion of the IEE.

So it may be that small tweaks to our present activities could enable us to collaborate with a local community group who’s objectives overlap with our own. We will see what our organising committee think at our next meeting.