2025 was a busy year at the Salters’ Institute
Welcome back for another year of chemistry fun – we hope you’ve all enjoyed a restful winter break and have returned with renewed energy for the year ahead. But before we start fully gearing up for a new year of outreach, we’ve taken a moment to look back on 2025 and all the impact our work has had over the last year.
Our year in numbers
- 875 students have been able to attend our Festivals of Chemistry Discovery Days across 10 different venues
- 76% of all students rated their enjoyment of the Discovery Day positively
- 20,900 Chemistry Club activities were completed – on average 57 activities per day
- The top five Chemistry Club themes were: colour, medicine, light, phones & devices, and materials
- 25 different awards were given out this year across 7 award schemes
Festivals of Chemistry
The Salters’ Institute has enjoyed a wonderful year, travelling the length of the country to deliver our Festivals of Chemistry outreach programme to all four nations of the UK. We were able to host 17 Discovery Days through partnering with the National Oceanography Centre, University of Southampton, University of Sunderland, University of Bath, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Liverpool, University of Aberdeen, Swansea University, Aston University, and Heriot-Watt University.
The 875 students in attendance had the opportunity to get stuck into synthesising aspirin in the lab, as well as hearing from an array of professionals with a background in chemistry. With 76% of students across all days rating their enjoyment positively, we are confident that we are continuing to inspire the next generation of scientist through the delivery of practical chemistry.
Chemistry Club
Chemistry Club continues to be a success amongst students aged 11-14. During the course of 2025, over 20,000 Chemistry Club activities were completed. This impressive figure equates to an average of 57 activities completed per day. The top hits, in terms of theme, were diverse, with the five themes with most completed activities being colour, medicine, light, phones & devices, and materials – suggesting that the opportunity to extend chemistry beyond the curriculum continues to attract young students.
Awards
It’s safe to say that the Salters’ Institute’s Awards saw an unprecedented number of applications across all awards in 2025, making it a tough process to shortlist from so many excellent candidates. Our appointed panellists did a great job of selecting the winners of 25 different Salters’ Awards, spanning a range of categories: Biology A Level Award, Chemistry A Level Award, Physics A Level Award, Porter Prize, Graduate Award – chemistry, Graduate Award – chemical engineering, and the Technician Awards. All 28 recipients joined us to celebrate their achievements at our Annual Awards Ceremony at Salters’ Hall in December and will subsequently be able to join the Salters’ Alumni programme.
After an excellent 2025, we are looking forward to building on this success over the upcoming year with exciting updates to our Awards and Festivals of Chemistry programmes, and some refreshing new content coming to Chemistry Club.