On Sunday 1st October 2023, STEM Wana delivered on the third edition of the multi-award winning Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest). The annual event is a highlight for many families and tamariki across Aotearoa and this edition delivered on a fun filled day full of wonder and discovery. Thousands got...
STEMFest is about creating inspiration AND aspiration. What could be more aspirational than being an Astronaut and going out of this world to live and work in space? STEMFest is proud to be able to introduce another NASA Astronaut to our STEM whānau. Meet the extraordinary NASA Astronaut Colonel...
By Rachael Pratt Did you know Women only make up 14% of engineers in Aotearoa? At STEM Wana, it is statistics like these that we are aiming to change. How do we go about making a change? We go straight to the source! On Friday 28th of July, STEM...
Here in the Bay of Plenty and across New Zealand, we are facing an unprecedented skills shortage. With most organisations waiting until kids are into their late teens to target them as future leaders and innovators, the team at STEM Wana believes that this is far too late. A...
Team STEMFest invited some of our sponsors and supporters to our STEM HQ at Babbage Space in Basestation to officially launch STEMFest 2023! It was great to see so many guests attend with their children and get the low-down on some of the exciting things we already have in...
PRESS RELEASE IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 19th, 2023 New Zealand’s largest free science, technology, engineering, and mathematics festival returns for 2023 Since 2018 STEMFest has been nurturing our region’s next generation of problem-solvers, innovators and leaders and this year the interactive festival is set to break new ground when it...
Renée Young is an Associate Mechanical Engineer for Beca. She works with other likeminded engineers everyday creating and developing habitable spaces for the public. From designing hospitals, commercial buildings, temples to hotels, her day to day is spent calculating, drawing and creating. She’s passionate about the future of STEM...
The Western Bay Community Awards 2023 bring together all those who are involved in the not-for-profit sector; to celebrate and acknowledge their incredible community work that is helping make the Western Bay of Plenty one of the greatest places to live. STEMFest was thrilled to have been nominated and...
Tuesday 10th January 2023 – By Janet Van Jenkins The day was finally here – Tuesday 10th January 2023 saw queues stretching out across Tauranga Boys’ College campus as over 600 keen young scientists and space enthusiasts lined up (in the rain!) to come and spend a “Night in...
Monday 9th January 2023 – By Tia Lush The second stop on day two of our SWTxNASA Tour was hosted at the beautiful Rotorua Library. It was the first time that we had worked with the amazing team there and everything was in hand and ready when Tia arrived...
Monday 9th January 2023 – By Tia Lush The second day of our SWTxNASA Tour saw sunshine and good weather over beautiful Taupō. Our friends at Taupō library had been briefed and had already been hard at work setting up their Children’s area and turning it into a presentation...
Sunday 8th January 2023 – By Rachael Pratt Arriving in Palmerston North on Saturday evening, the realisation that it was finally NASA tour time hit. My first stop was to the amazing Blueprint Makerspace. Where Zak showed me around their fabulous space. What a fantastic resource for the people...
A once in a lifetime opportunity for tamariki to meet with a record breaking NASA Astronaut at an event in Tauranga on Tuesday 10th January 2023 TAURANGA, NZ — 04 JANUARY, 2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Record breaking NASA astronaut and microbiologist Dr. Kate Rubins will be touching down in...
Everyone is invited to come and meet Dr. Kate Rubins as she travels from Palmerston North to Tauranga from 8th January to 10th January 2023 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE TAURANGA, NZ — 22 NOVEMBER, 2022 Record breaking NASA astronaut and microbiologist Dr. Kate Rubins will be touching down in Aotearoa...
STEMFest is about creating inspiration AND aspiration. What could be more aspirational than being an Astronaut and going out of this world (literally)? During the planning for the Space Zone, the team reached out to our friends at NASA and while they were unable to provide a live stream...
“Best organised & most informative free event I’ve ever taken my kids to!” Vicky McGreal – Visitor (Facebook 03 October 2022) The anticipation for the second award winning STEMFest was high, well before the big day, with tickets ‘sold out’ a week in advance. Sunday the 2nd of October...
Since July 2022, STEMFest has been running a competition open to rangatahi across Aotearoa aged between 10-16 years of age. We challenged them to step into a NASA engineer’s shoes to design and create a robot, inspired from insects’ unique characteristics, with the capability of surviving on Mars. Five...
As a registered charity, STEM Wana trust relies on the support from generous funders to ensure that we can put on the biggest (and best) STEM Festival in the Southern Hemisphere. This year STEMFest is one of 15 Te Moananui ā Toi events that have received funding from the...
Our finalists are in the midst of their InsectBot build and working hard on 3D printing, coding, and electronics. We thought it might be good for them to take a little break and share a little bit about themselves… Meet our finalists Abby I am Abby and I live...
After a challenging couple of years due to the global pandemic, we are super excited to bring back Tauranga STEM Festival on Sunday the 2nd of October. It will be the second edition of STEMFest. Following on from the first award winning event will be a challenge – but...
New Zealand’s young innovators have been set a mission of creating an InsectBot capable of surviving on Mars for the chance to win an exclusive VIP tour of the Rocket Lab facilities. The Great InsectBot Mission Competition is being led by STEM Wana Trust ahead of Tauranga STEM Festival,...
STEM Wana Trust were proud to host the official STEMFest Launch Party on Thursday 7th July 2022. Board Trustee Amanda Crowther welcomed sponsors, friends at Basestation and Tinkd Makerspace for an evening of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The organising team were delighted to share our exciting highlights for...
International Women in Engineering Day is an international awareness campaign to raise the profile of women in engineering and focus attention on the amazing career opportunities available to girls in this exciting industry. It celebrates the outstanding achievements of women engineers throughout the world. Meet Alex — engineer, adventurer,...
Prepare to take off for the best STEMFest yet as New Zealand’s largest science, technology, engineering, and mathematics festival (STEM) returns after a two-year hiatus. More than 50 exhibitors are expected in Tauranga from all over Aotearoa for the free, family-friendly street festival on Sunday 2 October, 2022. Highlights...
We’ve had some amazing entries from tamariki for this year’s STEMFest mascot superhero. We asked tamariki to think about an environmental problem that meant something to them and then to create a superhero who could solve that problem using the awesome powers of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)....
Terms and Conditions Tauranga STEM Festival Mascot competition is open to residents of the Bay of Plenty aged 8 – 12 years old. All entrants should ask permission from a parent or guardian before entering. Please see the form attached for parents/guardian to sign. Only one artwork per artist...
This summer over three days we welcomed hundreds of visitors to a very special series of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics sessions in Tauranga. It started on Thursday 20th January 2022 with a workshop covering Artificial Intelligence with Matias Iacono from Cucumber NZ in the morning. Our participants choose...
Thursday 20th to Saturday 22nd January 2022 STEM in the Community – Summer Edition is a fringe event of Tauranga STEM Festival with several fun hands-on activities and a STEM Open Day taking place at Basestation, 148 Durham Street, Tauranga during the summer holidays. There will be something for...
It is with great disappointment that the Board of STEM Wana Trust are reluctantly announcing the cancellation of Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) on the 5th December 2021. After months and months of work by the STEMFest project team and the initial postponement from our original October date, we have...
A big thanks to all those who attended our STEM in the Community events over the October 2021 school holidays. Our team really enjoyed travelling around to different locations in the Bay of Plenty and meeting all our STEM friends. We would also like to extend a huge thanks...
Tauranga STEM Festival is proud to present another STEM in the Community event during the October school holidays. Tuesday 5th October 2021 at 08:30am at University of Waikato, Tauranga Campus. Durham Street. Want to know what it’s like to work in STEM? Curious about how other people started their...
October School Holiday STEM Activities Introducing STEM in the Community for 8-12 year olds STEM in the Community is our outreach project held in locations across the Bay of Plenty, where we bring together amazing STEM content providers, smart venues and enthusiastic children and tamariki. Each location is run as...
Tauranga STEM Festival 2021 originally planned for 3rd October 2021, has secured a new alternative date later on in the year. This year’s event will be held on Sunday 5th December 2021. The team have continued to work during the latest lockdown and with the support of Tauranga City...
Due to the unknown nature of the situation with the COVID-19 lockdown, the Board of STEM Wana Trust have discussed our options for this year’s Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) 2021. After much deliberation and discussion, it is with a heavy heart that we are announcing the postponement of STEMFest...
STEM Wana Trust/Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) will operate under the guidelines for Alert Levels 1-4 provided by the New Zealand government. Full details of which can be found here: https://covid19.govt.nz/activities/public-events-and-entertainment/ Our team will also be working closely with Tauranga City Council events team, as well as community groups and...
Thursday 12th August 2021 saw sponsors, friends, and media gather at Basestation and Tinkd Makerspace for the official STEMFest 2021 launch. The Board of STEM Wana Trust and organising team were delighted to share our exciting highlights for STEM in the Community and STEMFest on 3rd October 2021. It...
This year the organising team wanted our talented STEM whānau to help us come up with a superhero mascot for STEMFest 2021 that solves an environmental problem using STEM superpowers. Entries came in from young people across Tauranga and during the July school holidays we also hosted a special...
Expect experiments and explosions as the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics festival STEMFest returns, promising an even bigger and better event for 2021. The inaugural Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) in 2019 attracted 3,500 visitors from across New Zealand. The event also scooped the TECT Community Awards for Event Excellence...
STEM Wana Trust is incredibly excited to announce Trustpower as the Headline sponsor for the award winning Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) 2021! Trustpower have been supporting our charity from 2019 when it was a gigabyte sponsor of STEMFest 2019 and then again in 2020 as part of the STEM...
Natalie will be our official representative for STEMFest and doing social media takeovers and will be sharing all the plans and exciting news in the build up to STEMFest in October. Natalie is a marine biologist, doing a PhD on marine ecology and is a Doctoral Assistant at the...
Natalie will be our official representative for STEMFest and doing social media takeovers and will be sharing all the plans and exciting news in the build up to STEMFest in October. Natalie is a marine biologist, doing a PhD on marine ecology and is a Doctoral Assistant at the...
During the school holidays 19th April – 2nd May 2021, we invited our families to take part in the STEM Explorer Trail in Tauranga’s CBD. We had reports of lots of STEM explorers enjoying the activity and getting out and about. There was a very special stop at Craniums...
Made by our community, for our community The STEM Explorer Trail was designed, developed and produced by the participants in the Youth Dev Challenge programme which ran for 12 weeks, as part of the 2020 STEM Initiative. Families and teams are invited to take part in an interactive explorer...
Family Event: Saturday 17th July 2021 Create a Mascot Superhero that will solve an environmental problem using science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) superpower. Design a superhero STEM mascot (on A4 paper). Give your mascot a STEM superpower that will solve an environmental problem. Give your mascot a superhero...
TECT Community Awards Recognise Inaugural Festival Held in October 2019 TAURANGA, NZ – 26 JUNE, 2020 — TECT Community Awards have announced Tauranga STEM Festival (STEMFest) as the winner of the Event Excellence Award. The Festival was the first-ever community driven STEM event to be held in New Zealand....
By Qi-Wern Lim – STEM Champion / Aspiring TeacherPublished Last Wednesday 6th May 2020 I was lucky enough to get to chat with Chris Lintott along with Alyssa Minshall and student ambassadors Micaela, Thomas, Anthony, Michael and Elliot from Otumoetai College. This talk was the first event in the Conversations in STEM series and...
Watch our online session on Wednesday 6th May 2020 Astronomers have gotten very good at finding planets around other stars. In this informal online session you will be able to get up close and personal with one of the world’s leading science communicators and find out how you can...
Tauranga STEM Festival 2019 has been shortlisted as a finalist in the TECT Community Awards under the category of Event Excellence. The team are thrilled to have been nominated by so many people and to be a finalist in our very first year is a real honour. Founder, Tia...
The STEMFest Elves have been busy working on a STEMFestive experience for STEM lovers of all ages. We have two awesome events for your diary… Saturday 14th December – 11am to 2pm If you missed out on attending STEMFest this year, or if you just want to re-live the...
“An outrageous success!” — Professor Chris Battershill, Coastal Marine Field Station.New Zealand Herald. WOW. What an amazing STEMFest that was! One week on and things are still very busy at HQ (no time to rest) while we start collecting and analysing all of the data, information, and feedback to...