The Big Ideas team has been working for the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 on their annual partnership event “The Engineers” with the BBC World Service.  This year it hasn’t been possible to hold a live event, so the decision was taken to move The Engineers online.

The Engineers: Re-engineering the Future brought together an audience of engineers and the general public drawn from six continents to explore the ways engineers are responding to the Covid-19 crisis.

The word engineer to me is so closely linked to the term ingenuity… ingenuity is what great engineers who are rising to the call do best and it’s got a piece of inventiveness, it’s got some fearlessness, it’s got gumption. Linda Miller, Bechtel 

Presenter Kevin Fong hosted a panel of four of the world’s leading engineers: Linda Miller, Luke Leung, Rebecca Shipley and Carlo Ratti. Audience questions from every part of the world were at the heart of the event. With comments from Australia to Brazil, Nigeria to the Philippines, it was inspiring to listen to engineers addressing the challenges of Covid-19 worldwide. 

The event itself made use of new engineering in a form of a ‘Virtual Audience System’ (VAS). The VAS collated sound from the worldwide audience to create a unique, ‘in the room’ feel.

Download the souvenir PDF here,

The event was recorded and broadcast on the BBC World Service. Download the souvenir PDF of the event for details of how to listen.

You can find out more about Big Ideas work with the Royal Commission and the Great Exhibition at Home project here.