Little Inventors: Pioneers Energy Challenge
The brief
In autumn 2019 Little Inventors launched the Pioneers Energy Challenge, looking for 15 young pioneers aged 8 to 12 across Tees Valley, Sunderland and Northumberland. Children were asked to invent something to generate energy, save energy or use energy better, and the challenge needed a film that would make them want to have a go.
On the day
Fifteen Zoom sessions, then a lot of animating, then a bit more animating.
It kept the Pioneers challenge going while nobody could get into schools, though, so we’d do it again.
Our approach
We handed the film to someone who’d done it before: a ten-year-old from Stockton-on-Tees whose invention from the Great Exhibition of the North challenge had been made real. He tells the story of seeing it built and ending up on national TV and radio, explains why energy matters, and invites other children to enter, with the deadline up front.
Then the pandemic hit, halfway through the project. With workshops cancelled, we made 12 bite-size making tutorials with local artist Lottie Smith so the 15 chosen children could keep prototyping at home, and ran 15 Zoom sessions when they were due to meet their makers, recording around 17 hours of interviews.
Deliverables
A two-minute challenge launch film, then 12 making tutorials and 15 self-contained films, one for every chosen child, for the virtual Little Inventors Pioneers Exhibition.
The result
More than 3,000 children took part in Pioneers workshops across the region and over 2,000 invention ideas were uploaded. Fifteen were made real by professional makers, and the online exhibition launched in July 2020.