Incentive to get inventive
An innovative arts project which encouraged children in Sunderland to come up with weird and wonderful inventions has inspired one of the highlights of the Great Exhibition of the North.
It’s been revealed today that the Little Inventors programme by Sunderlandborn artist and inventor Dominic Wilcox will be reborn as The Great North Little Inventors 2030 Challenge for the 80-day exhibition which aims to celebrate great art, culture, design and innovation from across the North.
As part of the challenge, young people aged four to 12 will be asked via the exhibition website to imagine life in the North in 2030 and share their ideas, until March 16, for a chance to have their creations turned into reality in time for the exhibition which runs from June 22 to September 9.
Speaking at the launch at Sage Gateshead, Dominic said: “We’re really excited at Little Inventors to see what sort of inventive and visionary ideas about the future the children in the North of England have got in their brilliant minds. There’s a long and proud history of invention and engineering up here and it’s the young people who are the ones who will carry that on, working hard to make the world a better place through their creative and innovative thinking.”
Free to attend, the event is hosted at various locations in Newcastle and Gateshead, and expected to reach an audience of three million people.
The Great Exhibition of the North is backed by more than £5million of Government funding, and is expected to bring a £184million boost to the North East.
The exhibition will open on June 22 and will run under the headline theme ‘Get North’.