While optics and photonics are exciting disciplines with much research, industrial, and economic potential in the 21st century, this appreciation is only shared by a limited number of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) experts, and there is a recognized STEM skills shortage. To widen the pool of talent, it is essential to expose students to optics and photonics throughout their education and particularly starting at a young age. The Lightwave programme, consisting of an interactive collection of photonics demonstrations and experiments targeted for primary school students, was thus created to facilitate this endeavor. The programme is run by doctoral students forming a team of "Lightwave ambassadors". All the demonstrations that comprise Lightwave can be easily integrated into a physics curriculum, enabling educators to generate more student interest and enhance the image of science through an interactive pedagogy. We provide a description of the programme at its initial inception, and report on the recent additions and updates that have brought about its success, moving from a purely outreach driven focus to engaging pupils with our own research. We also discuss our approach to ensuring that our team of ambassadors are from diverse backgrounds and use both male and female students as role models. Finally, we reflect on how evaluation methods to obtain feedback from our activities are key to Lightwave's sustainability and in improving the perception of optics and photonics.

The accepted industrial skills shortage in the subjects of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) in the United Kingdom has led to an increasing drive for universities to work with a wider pool of potential students. One contributor to this drive is the Lightwave Roadshow, a photonics-focused outreach program run by postgraduate students from the University of Southampton. The program has benefitted from the unique platform of the International Year of Light (IYL) 2015 for the development and support of hands-on and interactive outreach activities. In this report we review Lightwave activities facilitated by IYL that focused on widening participation for students aged 6 to 18 years from a multitude of societal categories; the roadshow has directly benefitted from the significance and investment into the IYL in conjunction with university recruitment strategies, local schools and the support of international organizations such as SPIE and OSA. Lightwave has used the foundation of the IYL to provide a wide range of activities for over 1,200 UK students in 53 different schools; the assessment tools used to measure learning outcomes, reach and impact are also discussed. The program's activities have been developed to make younger age groups the center of the outreach activity and create an environment which encourages youth pursuit of optics and science from a grassroots level upwards; to illustrate this we will outline a Lightwave project endorsed by the IYL steering committee to permit two 6 th form students to attend the IYL opening ceremony in Paris.

The Lightwave Roadshow is an outreach program run by research students at the University of Southampton, UK, that seeks to educate and inspire young students with optics, through conducting workshops in local schools and exhibiting at local and regional educational fairs. Adopting a hands-on philosophy enabled by an extensive collection of experimental optical demonstrations, Lightwave aims to promote scientific interest and indirectly address the global STEM skills shortage. While Lightwave has become a well-established program in local schools since its inception in 1998, 2015 included an unprecedented number of overseas activities. Inspired by the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL 2015), Lightwave organized a school workshop in a foreign country (Singapore) as well as exhibited at major events, including the IYL 2015 opening ceremony in France, which marked the first time that the roadshow used UK school students to deliver outreach activities beyond the UK. These recent successful overseas projects have encouraged the outreach team to continue expanding the reach of the roadshow internationally. Of particular note is the involvement of Lightwave at academic conferences, where experiences and best practices can be shared among outreach ambassadors from different programs, student chapters, universities, and organizations. This paper provides a review of these activities, and identifies the administrative and practical challenges of bringing a local outreach program abroad and some strategies to overcome them. We also outline our travel suite of experimental demonstration kit, a portable selection from our main equipment inventory. This won the recent OSA 'IYL-To-Go' student competition.

The 'Reflecting Photonics' show garden was exhibited at the 2015 Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) Flower Show in Tatton Park, UK, to celebrate the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies. Elks-Smith Garden Design alongside landscapers 'Turf N' Earth' collaborated with researchers, marketing and outreach professionals from the University of Southampton to design, construct and exhibit a photonics-themed garden. The garden and supporting exhibition united science and art to reach new audiences -particularly family groups alongside other key influencers to the young -and showcased the world-leading research in optical fibers at the university in an accessible manner. Researchers and a publicity professional, funded by the EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Photonics, developed an integrated approach to the event's public engagement and marketing. The overarching aim was to influence a positive change in the attitude of the garden visitors towards physics and photonics, with additional focus on promoting careers for women in STEM. The show garden won an RHS Gold Medal award and the coveted 'People's Choice Award' for the best large garden. The project subsequently won the South East England Physics Network Public Engagement Innovation Project Award. Approximately 80,000 visitors saw the garden, with a further three million television viewers on a popular British gardening show. There were also over 75,400 Tweet impressions on social media. This paper discusses the project aims, explores the design of the garden and its relationship with the research, describes the work of the public engagement team, and outlines the impact of the event.

The purpose of this article is to provide a plausible answer as to whether the Z-axis of holographic space can be used to depict a chronological narrative with an affective impact. This article describes a practice-based holographic arts study in which the author created interactive artworks with family photographs taken from the late 1800s to the present day, and stacked them in chronological order within the Z-axis of holographic space. The artworks were evaluated by different audiences to determine whether the viewer could perceive the new application of holographic space, and whether the artwork had an affective impact. An art critique method used both in Higher Education settings in the UK and in professional art practice, was adapted as a research tool for use in this study and termed ‘the silent researcher critique’. The findings of the project were that audiences had a new experience when interacting with the works and were impacted emotionally by them, however only a group of experts in art and holography were able to identify and comprehend the new conceptual use of the Z-axis of holographic space. This study’s value can be measured by its offering practice-based arts researchers a novel method of obtaining valuable critical feedback from peers and by its contribution to the aesthetic development of the medium of art holography.