On April 16, 2018, the grand finale of the ScienceTube students’ video contest was staged. 200 guests experienced 12 live film contributions submitted by eight schools belonging to the Rhein-Erft Rural District, a cheerfully-disposed panel of judges consisting of students and ex-perts, cool science shows and a totally authentic welcome in the form of a video message from North Rhine Westphalia’s Education Minister, Yvonne Gebauer, who was simultaneously the project’s patron. The MEDIO. RHINE. ERFT venue was converted into a cinema specially for the finale. The project is part of the series of extensive REload initiatives staged by the Rhein-Erft District WFG (business promotion organization).

The task of the competition was to get pupils of the 5th to 7th grades to learn from 8th to 10th grade students via a scientific experiment carried out in the film. The special challenge here was the homeland context of the MINT experiments (relating to maths, informatics, natural science, and technology). The assessment criteria were, furthermore, the quality and accuracy of the content, image and sound quality, the quality of the follow-up work (e.g. editing, vari-ous effects), artistic design and coherence (e.g. of images and soundtrack), plus originality and creativity.

All the groups won. In addition to each participant receiving a certificate and a power bank, all the pupils and students had lots of fun experimenting and making films, and were also able to learn quite a lot in the process. Five schools were awarded prize money of between 250 and 750 euros, and their achievements were acclaimed with special prizes.

For matters relating to the overall conception, organization, set-up planning and artistic man-agement, the welcome GmbH company was once more in the boat together with the Rhein-Erft District business promotion organization (WFG) and the LNU Frechen (centre of excellence for science and environmental issues). All the films can be viewed on the YouTube channel entitled “ScienceTube Rhein-Erft”.