Merck recently travelled to the Northern Territory with the DeadlyScience team to pilot the first DeadlyLabs kit.
The project led by Indigenous Elders in the Robinson River region aims to share their knowledge, ideas, and care for the community.
“It was an amazing experience for staff, students, and community. Everyone is still talking about it,” said Chris Errington from Robinson River School.
DeadlyLabs – a new project from DeadlyScience, supported by Merck, is designed to merge cultural knowledge and learning on country with hands-on experiments in the classroom.
About 50 students across three classes from Robinson River School combined traditional knowledge with classroom-safe science to make soap and test its ability to extradite bacteria from participants’ hands.
A film crew recorded the lessons so that Robinson River students could demonstrate soap-making and testing experiments to schools around Australia.
“The feedback from the Robinson River community was so warm and encouraging,” said DeadlyScience founder, adjunct associate professor Corey Tutt OAM. “They’re so proud to be leading this pilot program, knowing that DeadlyLabs will become a kit that other communities can use, incorporating their own traditional knowledge.”
