Having great craic bringing Supermarket Sweep to Ireland!

In Supermarket Sweep: The CoDiet Escape Room‘s first display outside the UK, it was fantastic to have CoDiet partner, Teagasc, invite Ally and Ivana from the project’s Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation team across the pond, to showcase the activity.

Science at the Marina, now in its third year, brings science to people who may not usually have the opportunity to engage with STEM by meeting them where they are. The Marina Market is Cork’s largest indoor market, with over 35 food vendors. It’s a bustling hub of activity, community and incredible food. They also happen to have a few large event halls which can be hired for a range of different events – including a science festival!

CoDiet Communications Manager, Ally Rayner and Dr Liam Walsh from Teagasc with ‘RoboBoss’

Prof. Orla O’Sullivan from Teagasc, an unwavering champion of all things public engagement, has long supported the work of the CoDiet communication and dissemination team. Once she caught wind of the development of Supermarket Sweep: The CoDiet Escape Room, it was only a matter of time before she found an opportunity for the activity to be brought to Irish audiences.

Supermarket Sweep was created to engage diverse audiences with the core themes of the CoDiet project. In this interactive experience, teams step into the role of a ‘RoboShopper’ on their induction, being set a series of tasks in a futuristic supermarket. There are no customers in the store; instead, individuals submit their data (such as urine samples or blood tests), which are then used to generate personalised shopping lists. Teams have 30 minutes to solve a sequence of puzzles and challenges, identify and collect the five correct grocery items, and reach the checkout before time runs out!

Throughout the day, the team ran five sessions of Supermarket Sweep (originally planned as four, but demand was too high to resist adding another!). This brings the total number of participants who have taken part in the activity to 149. The reception was warm, enthusiastic, and incredibly encouraging.

Some of the feedback included:

‘It was so much fun, the best thing in this place!’

‘That was soooo cool, I really enjoyed solving the puzzle with the barcode scanner’

Again, a massive thank you to the team at Teagasc (especially Eimear Ferguson and Niranjana Rose Edwin) for being so supportive of the work the comms team are doing in CoDiet and for hosting the team at their fabulous event!

To learn more about Supermarket Sweep, get in touch with the activity’s creator and CoDiet’s Communications Manager, Alexandra Halbish Rayner – a.halbish-rayner@imperial.ac.uk

Supermarket Sweep taking over the Marina Market in Cork, Ireland

 

 

 

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