Igniting the Spark: The Gala Dinner 2025
Last month saw Salters’ Hall come to life for our Spark! Fundraising Gala Dinner – an evening of generosity, inspiration, and commitment in aid of supporting the work of the Salters’ Institute, promoting the teaching and learning of practical chemistry across the UK.
We would like to express our thanks to all our guests for their generosity at the Spark! Fundraising Gala Dinner. Providing context to the curriculum by way of hands-on experiments in university laboratories, unique access to industry site visits, and engagement through our other programmes, is all made possible through nights like the Gala Dinner – allowing us to give young people the opportunity to engage with chemistry outside the classroom.
The night began with testimonies from those participating in our programmes. Students in attendance at our 2025 Festivals of Chemistry spoke to their enjoyment and appreciation of the programme in allowing them to experiment with practical science in a way they had not been able to before. This is a sentiment which has been echoed by many young people through their evaluation comments this summer,
“My favourite part of the day was the practical experiment as they are not common at my school”.
At a time when more schools than ever are facing budget cuts and struggles to deliver consistent practical chemistry experiences, the Festivals of Chemistry programme becomes ever more pertinent in providing a taste of lab work to young people. A taste which may ignite the spark to take chemistry further.
Our guest speaker for the night, Dr Alice Green, recalled fond memories of her experience attending a Salters’ Institute outreach programme as a teenager, further driving home the impact of our work. Embarking on her first Salters’ Institute programme gave Alice the inspiration to pursue chemistry beyond the core curriculum. Eventually going on to win a Salters’ Graduate Award in her final year of undergraduate study, Alice perfectly encapsulates the full potential of engagement in our programmes.
Between listening to the stories of success and scholars, guests were invited to join together in a multitude of fundraising activities. From testing their luck in a tense game of Heads & Tails, to entering into a bidding frenzy during the live auction, a sense of joy and merriment could be felt around the Hall. Thanks to the generosity of our guests in supporting the work of the Institute, we will in turn be able to bring this joy and merriment to another cohort of young people via our outreach programmes in 2026.