STEM Workshops in Wokingham & Bracknell

Wokingham was once known for casting bells: from the 14th to the 16th century its foundry supplied many churches across the South of England, and in the Tudor period the town was known for silk production, with houses from that cottage industry still standing in Rose Street. A more recent engineering thread runs through Arborfield, on the edge of the borough, home from 1904 to the Army's Remount Depot and, after the Second World War, to the depot of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers. Army apprentices trained at Arborfield from 1939 until 2004, and the garrison closed in 2015. Bracknell took a different path: designated a new town in 1949, it became home to the Met Office's national headquarters from 1962 to 2003.

Bracknell's Met Office headquarters, opened by the Queen in 1962, was the working base of two notable scientists. Sir Basil John Mason led the Office from 1965 to 1983, developing the physics of how clouds form raindrops and how electric charge separates inside thunderclouds; he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1965 and knighted in 1979. His successor, Sir John Houghton, Director-General from 1983 to 1991, chaired or co-chaired the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's scientific assessment working group from 1988 to 2002 and was lead editor of its first three reports, work that shared the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007.

Bracknell's technology base outlasted the Met Office's move to Exeter in 2003. Fujitsu Services, the company that was named International Computers Limited until 2002, is registered at Lovelace Road in Bracknell. In neighbouring Winnersh, the Winnersh Triangle business park is home to companies including BD, Menarini and HP, and the park says 80% of its businesses operate in science and technology sectors. Imperial College London's Silwood Park campus at Ascot, near Bracknell, adds a research centre for ecology, evolution and conservation.

Bracknell and Wokingham College, part of Activate Learning since 2019, is the area's further education college, offering further and higher education and apprenticeships. Local technical employers include Fujitsu's IT services company at Lovelace Road and the science and technology businesses at Winnersh Triangle, among them BD, Menarini and HP. Imperial College London's Silwood Park campus at Ascot offers master's and PhD courses in ecology, evolution and environmental science.