Academic outreach

Coming up with story ideas can be hard work, but you really just have to sit down and get started. A session designed to help you get the creative muscles fired up and get all those brilliant story ideas down on paper.

A small but perfectly formed piece of creative writing can often have as much impact as long-form storytelling. Learn how to write with brevity and concision in this creative writing workshop.  

Writing great dialogue for specific dramatic situations. Tricks and tools about formatting your dialogue in prose, coming up with great opening lines and writing in the specific voice of your character.

How to write a three-dimensional character with recognisable features, empathetic traits and surprising quirks

Contemporary poetry is dominated by free verse but there are countless other forms in the poet's toolbox. This poetry workshop will introduce you to the idea of writing with a variety of poetic restrictions and how it can liberate your imagination.

Although the school summer holidays may conjure images of sunshine, the seaside and ice creams for many pupils, it also brings the harsh realities of hunger for some. Discover the often unseen side of school holidays and learn how YOU can be part of the solution.

At least 190 days of your year are spent in school… 190 DAYS, that’s over half of the year! And, you have been doing this since you were 5 years old! Are we getting school wrong? Explore this question and more. Join staff from the Education programme at Keele, whilst we explore why school sucks and what we can do about it. 

In this session you will look at William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and Kalynn Bayron's Cinderella is Dead, and explore their treatment of young love against a backdrop of oppressive gender stereotypes and social expectations. How do the attitudes towards women in Shakespeare’s four-hundred-year-old play relate to attitudes that are still found in society today? What do these literary works have to tell us about sexuality and gender in a world that is often afraid of change, difference, and diversity?

Why did the Romantics find dreams so compelling? How did they use them to explore the world and the self? In this session you will undertake a case study of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Kubla Khan. You will learn about the psychology of his dreams, the impact of his drug abuse, his fascination with the exotic East, and the taboo subjects that he felt could only be treated in distorted dreamscapes. The session will give you hints and tips on how to become a successful close reader of poetry. 

Why are novels so full of things? Descriptions of objects are often easy to ignore, but what if we stop and pay attention? Taking Oscar Wilde’s Gothic novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray as a case study, this session will invite you to consider what the commonplace objects that we might easily overlook can tell us about the characters and the themes of a book.

Are comics and graphic novels really literature? This session will show they most certainly are. They have their own codes and frameworks through which they can be interpreted. The workshop will introduce graphic novels, from Spiderman and The Archie Comics to Nimona, Death Note and Heartstopper. You will learn how to write about the style, graphic weight, colour, and font. In the second half of the workshop, you will close read Richard McGuire’s graphic novel, Here in which McGuire presents the same environment over the millennia. Prehistoric dinosaurs roam in the same house as a suburban family of the 1950s! Using detective work, you will piece together the story of Here, and consider what it tells us about human progress, nature, and time.

This workshop will look at the 2012 film The Hunger Games. After comparing a passage from Suzanne Collins's novel to a scene in the film we will reflect on the art of film adaptation. In the process, you will be introduced to key film production concepts such as mise en scène, cinematography, and post-production to allow you to become sophisticated readers of the screen.

In this taster lecture we will explore the world of professional game design. You will learn the fundamental principles of crafting compelling player experiences and get a clear roadmap for the skills and knowledge needed to build a successful career in the multi-billion-dollar games industry.

This taster session will introduce both 2D and 3D modelling and animation. You'll see how materials, shaders, lighting, are handled to create realistic game environments.

The American Civil Rights Movement is one of the most famous yet often misunderstood social movements in modern history. This taster session will map out the movement’s precursors and key aspects of antiracist activism in the mid-twentieth century. It will introduce students to key recent trends in historical writing about the era, with a particular focus on debates concerning the roles of grassroots activism and high level leadership in driving civil rights advances.

In June 1941, an entire village in then-occupied Czechoslovakia was razed to the ground by the Nazis, its inhabitants executed or forcefully displaced. Thousands of miles away in Stoke-on-Trent, a doctor and local councillor, Barnett Stross, launched an international campaign with the generous help of local workers with the slogan ‘Lidice shall Live’. The Campaign continued until Stross’ death in 1967. Retelling this extraordinary story of hope, solidarity and generosity across borders is as poignant today as it was in those dark times of global conflict and terror. This session will contain interactive elements, such as discussing newspaper clippings and video content; and a virtual tour of heritage locations in Stoke relating to the campaign and the Lidice memorial.

Our current concerns about ‘fake news’ and the manipulation of truth into fiction seem new and unique to our age. Yet ‘fake news’ has a very long history, and often seems to accompany new forms of communication and media. This session turns to the early-twentieth century, when new mass printing techniques allowed newspapers to proliferate, and along with them a series of conspiracy theories and untruths that often turned on anti-Semitism. Yet the very real atrocities committed by Germans against Belgian civilians show how hard it was for contemporaries to tease apart the real from the unreal, and the ease with which history seems to change to fit our narratives. Would you have known what was really going on?

The 1958 Notting Hill riots are often identified as a major turning point in modern Britain, where Britain’s first race riots occurred, ushering in an era of increasing migration alongside growing anti-migrant sentiment. Notting Hill was the centre of a large working class and migrant population. Some scholars have said that these ‘race riots’ should really be understood as a gang attack: working class ‘teddy boys’ asserting dominance in the area. So was this the beginnings of anti-migrant politics, or a misunderstood local issue?

This session, which fits with A-Level History option 2S, will explore the case study of this riot: why it happened, how it relates to larger issues around labour and class and race in post-war Britain, as well as youth cultures and moral panics.

This session will explore the relationship between women and the American Revolution and how ‘Republican Motherhood’ became central to the new republic. The session will explore a range of diverse themes and issues including: How did women, across race and class lines, engage with the events and ideas of the American Revolution? How and why did women’s education change after the American Revolution? What is the legacy of the American Revolution for women in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries?

This interactive session will feature an introduction lecture, student debate and primary source analysis. This session has been designed to complement AQA Birth of the USA, 1760-1801 and OCR American Revolution, 1740-96, but it would benefit students interested in war cultures and gender across time and place.

The rise of the global right in recent decades raises questions about the viability of the international liberal order. What do parties, movements, and political figures like the National Rally in France, Brexit in the UK, Donald Trump in the USA, Modi in India, and others have in common? Do they pose a threat to the current international liberal order and democracy? This talk will engage critically with the global right, trace its roots, and evaluate its threats to the international liberal order.

We used to think in binary terms: we are either at war or living through peaceful times. This doesn’t seem to be the case anymore with ongoing regional wars (e.g., Ukraine, Middle East, Africa), Cyberwarfare, continuous tensions between major powers on the world stage, or indeed the climate catastrophe.  How can we make sense of our insecure global times? Do we need a new way of thinking about war, peace, and global order? This talk will offer a historical analysis of war and peace in world politics, while offering new ways to think about our complex contemporary global order.

The Middle East has long been seen as a source of regional and global instability. Continuous tensions between Saudi Arabia and Iran; the Israeli-Palestinian conflict; the Arab Spring; The invasion of Iraq in 2003 and its aftermath; oil and more. How can we make sense of the complex international relations of the ME and its effects globally? What role does the history of colonialism and imperialism play in today’s ME politics? This talk will offer a critical analysis of the role great powers play in ME history, as well as contemporary challenges the region faces.

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If you have an idea for a session that isn’t requested, please get in touch with the team as we may be able to offer a bespoke session designed to meet the needs of the audience.

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Keele's Library research sessions offer a fantastic opportunity for your students to experience, study and use print resources within a university library to develop their projects for coursework or their Extended Project Qualification (EPQ).  

During your visit you can expect: 

• Dedicated support from our Liaison and Research Support Librarian with 10 years of experience of facilitating school visits at Keele 
• A 45-min research skills talk to help students find, use, evaluate and reference library resources 
• Direction on using Keele’s library catalogue to find books 
• Access to over half a million print books (no online access due to licencing restrictions) 

What is the most significant medical advance?

What do you think is the most significant medical advance? Join us for an engaging and interactive session where you will work in teams to solve puzzles that unravel major medical breakthroughs. 

Once the puzzles are solved, you will cast votes to decide which medical advance deserves the title of "most significant". 

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Minimum class size of 6 people required

When does a poison become a medicine, and when does a medicine become a poison?

The origin of physic, or pharmacological therapy, is the use of plants to treat illnesses. Many commonly used therapeutic drugs – as well as recreational drugs – are derived from plants or other living organisms.

We will explore how many substances derived from living things, which were originally identified as poisons, came to be used in medicine. We will also look at how medicinal drugs can sometimes cause harm instead of benefit.

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What's the bleeding time?

When you cut yourself, or cause any kind of trauma to blood vessels, a hugely complex process begins to reduce the loss of blood by forming clots. But this can sometimes go wrong, either failing to produce clots or forming them in places where they block essential blood flow.

We will look at how blood clots form, what problems can arise when this goes wrong, and ways in which these problems may be fixed.

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Introduction to problem-based learning

Problem-based learning is one form of small-group, self-directed learning that is used in a variety of degree courses, including some medicine courses.

This session will give you a short experience of working through a clinical problem to identify the key points and to define a set of questions you need to explore to understand the case.

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First steps in diagnosis

When a patient first presents with a medical problem, there are several basic measurements that are performed to suggest possible causes. These include vital signs, electrocardiogram (ECG) and spirometry (lung function).

In this hands-on session, you will learn how these measurements are performed and what they can tell you.

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The taster session will introduce the Music Production and Sound Design programme at Keele, with a particular focus on music production/post-production/mastering and industry standard sound design works (foley for film trailers, video games, audio-visual ads, soundtrack for pre-existing video, audio track for TV/radio documentary, AV logos, online streaming forms, commercial music idents, etc).

This taster session introduces key aspects of popular music, exploring its socio-cultural context, functions, performers, markets, and scenes. It challenges cultural assumptions about sound and listening, examining popular culture, fandom, and sound recording. You will be introduced to dissemination, consumption, and sharing on digital platforms, covering ethics, strategies, methodologies, and realities in today’s music world.

In this taster session you will be introduced to leading-edge modern live music performance techniques. We will explore specific augmenting live performance techniques, including Recording studio and electronic music production techniques in live performance events, FX as performance tools, Launching, Reactive elements, Chance elements, and Live looping. 

The art of antenatal palpation?

Antenatal examinations are a key part of a midwives role, being carried out at most midwifery appointments as they help to assess fetal well being. In this workshop, the basic elements of this skill will be taught and students will have the opportunity to have hands on experience of performing this skill and listening to a simulation fetal heart beat

From making ethical purchasing decisions, to volunteering to help a cause you are passionate about, to reading the news, to protesting against any type of injustice, we all participate in politics all the time. This session will encourage you think about the ways in which we participate in politics and how we can change the world we live in, asking question such as: How important is it to vote? What other ways can people make their voices heard? Should 16-year-olds be allowed to vote?

The British political system, once a model for other nations, now faces sustained criticism. It has failed to provide stability, prosperity, and true representation. Events like the campaign for Scottish independence, Brexit, the COVID pandemic, and the rise of anti-politics have challenged the system. The political establishment grapples with these issues, creating a sense of crisis. However, the UK has also rapidly liberalised, recognising alternative lifestyles. These dynamics paint a complex picture of governance in the 21st century, which we’ll explore in this session.

Explore the pressing issue of social inequality with our interactive sociology outreach talk. Discover how sociologists study the roots and impacts of inequality and think about the ways we can work towards a more just society. Through engaging activities and real-world examples, you'll see why understanding inequality is crucial for shaping a better future.

One of the great concerns of contemporary society is how artificial intelligence will impact upon the future of humanity. How many of the jobs we currently take for granted will be carried out by machines? How will the rise of deepfakes shape our trust and relationships? This interactive session tackles the pros and cons of AI, and explores how sociology provides roadmap for navigating a world where humans and machines coexist.

Participants will be invited to explore how the experiences of parents and children are shaped by the societies in which we live. Examples and images from different historical periods and from around the world will be used in this interactive workshop.