Institute of Food Research & John Innes Centre will be at this event on Sept 9th

NEW for 2012 -Taste the Best of Norfolk Food & Drink Festival and Family Fun Day

Norfolk Showground
Sunday 9th September 11am - 4pm

Brand new for 2012 - come along and make a day of it at the Norfolk Showground and enjoy our Taste the Best of Norfolk Food & Drink Festival and Norfolk County Council's family fun day. This FREE event is running as part of the Norfolk leg of the Tour of Britain Cycle Race. See the finish of the race and have a fun day out!

The event will cater for all tastes and ages, with children’s activities, music, entertainment, arts and crafts with the spectacular Tour of Britain race finish at about 2.44 in the afternoon.

Buy some delicious produce from our local producers; enjoy the entertainment on our village green, have a go at some of our foodie games, enjoy fun activities, free tastings, cookery demonstrations plus lots more.

Here are some of the great local producers that you can buy a delicious picnic of locally sourced items from - confirmed so far.... Samphire, Honeysuckle Cakes, Yare Valley Oils, Philli Chillies, Guancheros Sauce, Fab Fudge, Woodberry Farm, The Bhajiman, Norfolk Finest Foods, Breckland Orchard, Essence Foods, Bintree Farm Shop, Tavern Tasty Meats, Office Water Supplies, Ethnic Fusion, Not Just Chocolate, Mrs Temple's Cheese, Raw Nibbles, Fielding Cottage, Fresh Approach, Denver Mill, Pure Apple Juice, Woodeforde's Norfolk Ales, Little Melton Yoghurt, Cornerways Tomatoes, Norfolk Farmhouse Milkshakes, First Thyme Drinks, Poppyland Brewery, That's Crafty - Gluten free Cupcakes, Bernard Matthews, The Norfolk Honey Company, Foxley Wood Aberdeen Angus, The Norfolk Deli, Trading Standards, Great Grove Poultry, Ronaldos, Castros, Norfolk Natterjacks plus lots more!

Open Days for school & public at the Institute of Food Research

IFR Open Day

Saturday 29 September 2012

10:00 - 16:00

This is a unique opportunity to wander around the Institute of Food Research, talk to scientists about their work, follow trails, take part in competitions and find out about what goes on inside one of the world's centres of scientific excellence right on your doorstep.

Schools Open Day

Friday 28 September

09:30 - 15:30

Open to Yrs 10-13, this is an exciting opportunity to wander round one of the UKs leading research centres, the Institute of Food Research, and find out about careers in science and what goes on inside it. There will be open labs, demonstrations, talks and activities around the buildings including flow cytometry, nuclear magnetic resonance or NMR for short, microscopy, chemical imaging and a chance to go inside a Biorefinery– an opportunity to see in action equipment you can often only read about or see photos of.
There will be activities on biofilms, translating proteins into music, taking part in a fat content taste panel, doing something a bit Risky, go inside the Step Back in Time Lab, take part in a sciart activity and the BBSRC Bioenergy display. Taste & Flavour, Do you Know Your Fats, Iron Extraction from Special K and keeping up the Olympic theme in case its long forgotten, Food for Sport, games and hands on fun not to mention walking through an inflatable colon!
You must register to attend and places are limited to 30 per year group per school, unless we have unfilled spaces. The only session you have to book in for are the set of short talks which last an hour in total which will be from 09:30, 10:45, 12:00, 13:15 and 14:30.  Talks will be on Food & Appetite, Food Safety, data mining, super Broccoli, Carbohydrate-protein interactions and food allergies. You are then free to do whatever you choose, although if certain areas get congested we may ask you to move on!
There will also be the chance to talk to other scientists from across the Norwich Research Park including the Genome Analysis Centre and John Innes Centre.
A dedicated careers area will be attended by the Food and Drink Federation, Chilled Foods Association, Leeds University, Institute of Food Science and Technology and London South Bank University, not to mention our own young up and coming researchers to talk informally to anyone wanting to know what it’s like to work in science, from physics to chemistry, biology to microbiology, molecular genetics, biochemistry and maths.
There is parking available on site and if dry you are welcome to have lunch and refreshments in the grounds. However, we have limited space inside to sit and eat so would prefer it if you could plan not to do so. Exceptions may be made for those travelling some distance.
To book your place please contact dawn.barrett@nbi.ac.uk by Friday 21st September.

Big Bang Day 3

Hoo boy! Busiest day yet - the public (i.e. families) arrive. Incredibly diverse range of questions which really kept us on our toes - extremely stimulating (if a little wearing on the vocal cords - loud tannoys & PAs to drown you out..)

Large queues for the Space UK ride (don't know if anyone threw up :-))

Other great stands included a STEM club at a secondary school that delivered a science activity to rest of school plus a Primary feeder school (Kudos!) and a school's project on the microbial contamination of mobile phones (apparently some pupils take their phones into the toilets as they are not allowed to use them in school and this just increases the odds of something nasty getting on the mobiles...).

Big Bang Day 2

Loads more children today. Plenty of popcorn got burnt and boxes of wristbands got given out>
Two nice stands spotted (society for applied microbiology - epidemic with typing of organisms) and Durham schools Science and Maths Buskers (Pupils trained to busk) - really inspirational.

Dave's DIY calorimeter needed some running repairs (mainly due to almost constant usage) - so here is the man himself doing his Bicycle Repairman bit (Monty Python sketch reference).









Steven doing a sports health race game with a small horde of pupils playing it. There were some tough questions (so much that some simpler ones were written for future use with the younger children).

Big Bang 2012 day one

Feet up in B&B after a busy day at Big Bang 2012. Predominantly primary schools today. Many quite knowledgeable on caloties. Dave's calorineter worked well and we moved on from burning popcorn to jelly beans. Finding blogging hard from tablet without bluetooth keyboard. Tomorrow should be mainly secondary schools.
To give a flavour of the show see some youtube footage posted by Big Bang Fair below.