Hard bones, flexible cartilage and soft brain: a matrix biology education outreach project for primary school children

“Extracellular matrix: without it, we would just be a shapeless mass of cells” is an outreach activity that we ran in October 2024. This half-day event aimed to educate year 6 pupils in a primary school in Nottingham on the extracellular matrix (ECM) and to engage them in STEM. We achieved this through various visual and tactile interactive activities, aiming to appeal to the wide range of learning styles within a classroom. This outreach was facilitated by a Biochemical Society Scientific Outreach grant that enabled us to provide creative materials, certificates, and a cash prize for science resources to the school. Furthermore, this event was run in partnership with the British Society for Matrix Biology (BSMB) and was showcased at the BSMB Spring 2025 meeting, which was held at the University of Nottingham on April 14–15, to enhance impact and inspire other scientists to engage in similar outreach activities. Both students and teachers provided positive feedback on the experience, and we left feeling rewarded and motivated to repeat it next year. In this article, we will set out how we ran the outreach and how you can too!