Technicians: industry’s unsung heroes

With Britain facing a skills shortage, a new exhibition is highlighting the work of British industry's backroom boys and girls

Pictured seated in a workshop, visor raised, 20-year-old Sophy Bage gazes resolutely across the room. Hair drawn back tightly into a ponytail, bright yellow earplugs just visible, a small smile steals across her illuminated face. She looks completely at home - and well she might. Because Bage is a welder.

On show at the Mall Galleries in central London, this photograph of Bage forms part of a week-long tribute to the little-known, yet vital, champions of science and engineering. Titled Technicians Make It Happen, and composed of photographs, paintings and items relating to a host of varied careers, the exhibition is a paean to those who make the wheels of industry turn, usher forth feats of civil engineering and build intricate equipment that will yield a slew of scientific results. "Technicians have a really diverse range of roles," says Nigel Thomas, executive director of Education and Skills at the Gatsby Charitable Foundation. "You'll see them in the NHS right through to stuff like satellite design."