As the officially designated “Proud Home of the Game” for the Rugby World Cup, significant public and private sector investment went into the town’s Festival of Rugby to fill the Fan Zone with a programme of sport, arts and cultural events.
RadioStation Rugby was delighted to support the town and borough council’s inward investment strategy and at the same time generate early exposure for the new development.
Keen to ensure our sponsorship was relevant to our vision for RadioStation Rugby, we sought out an activity which was educational, family-orientated and fitted with the site’s past and future. The Ministry of Science offered all of this in an engaging and fun way.
Their roadshow is professionally staged and well-known for its high impact experiments using liquid nitrogen and hydrogen to generate some awesome explosions.
They also tailored the show to Rugby the town and in particular to the history of radio and telecommunications. Alongside Ministry of Science, we linked up with BT to bring in one of its sports ambassadors (ex-England Rugby World Cup winner Ben Kay) who compered proceedings and set the pace for the dynamo bike competition. The event also reached out to local primary schools around the RadioStation site by incorporating a House of the Future design competition, which gave children a chance to win tickets as well as meet Ben Kay.
The winner’s designs will be placed alongside other mementos of 2015 in a time capsule to be buried on site next year.
800 people came along to our three shows. Both children and parents alike were on the edge of their seats as things went boom on stage and were extremely competitive when challenging Ben’s time on the dynamo bikes. As a half term activity, we couldn’t have asked for a better event to support, and it has generated real interest in both science and what’s coming next at RadioStation Rugby.
“We see our relationship with RadioStation Rugby as being built on a genuine and enduring partnership. The Ministry of Science event, sponsored by Urban&Civic and Aviva Investors, was a perfect example. As the officially designated “Proud Home of the Game” the Council built the Rugby Village, centred on the Fan Zone, in the town centre. When it wasn’t being used for live screening of matches it provided a great venue for a range of other attractions. One of those was the Ministry of Science – and I can tell you that it’s still being talked about. The focus on science for young people was ideal, given that the RadioStation site will be delivering four new schools. It even allowed me to challenge Mayor Onishi who was visiting us from Kumamoto, one of the Host Cities when the 2019 Rugby World Cup is held in Japan, to a dynamo bike challenge. I’m pleased to say that honours were even on that one.”
Councillor Michael Stokes Leader, Rugby Borough Council