For the fifth year running, members and supporters of the Women’s Engineering Society (WES) will be posting photos of Lottie Dolls at work during Tomorrow’s Engineers Week to show the wide range of careers available in engineering.
During the week, taking place in November 2020, photos will be posted on social media with the hashtag #WESLottieTour. The aim of the project is to present images of what a career in engineering might look like by use of a Lottie Doll to help capture the imagination of young people. The plan is for parents, grandparents and other family members and friends to share the online photos with the young people in their lives who may not have access to social media, so that this sparks an interest in engineering.
Lottie Tour has grown massively in the past few years, starting with only ten volunteers in its first year, to over 170 in 2019. Lottie has continued to capture the imagination of hundreds of people throughout the UK and beyond, travelling to many countries including USA, Malawi and Antarctica. This year has also seen the launch of a new website for the WES Lottie Tour, and the Lottie Tour has been opened up to sponsorship. This year’s tour is being sponsored by GKN Automotive.
Last year, WES created a double-sided poster with Lottie to celebrate the WES centenary, featuring historical female engineers who changed the world, as well as modern day engineers in various roles alongside their Lottie doll showcasing what jobs they do. This poster is targeted at schools and STEM clubs to use as a resource with primary school-aged children, and can be downloaded from the resources page of the Lottie Tour website. This year there will also be a worldwide Lottie design competition open to all ages which launches at the end of April as part of International Women in Engineering Day (INWED) celebrations.
The project is being organised by WES’ Early Careers Board (ECB) members, Kate Mactear and Vera Ngosi. To register your interest to be involved in the Lottie Tour this year, or to become a sponsor, visit the Lottie Tour website or contact the ECB at [email protected]. If you would like to follow Lottie’s Tour this year, all of the images from the week can be viewed by searching #WESLottieTour on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, or following @WESECB1919 and @Lottie_dolls on Twitter.