Little Inventors: How to think up invention ideas!

Artist, designer and inventor Dominic Wilcox is on a mission to inspire the world's children to use their amazing imaginations to think up and invent incredible, funny or useful things. He is Chief Inventor at Little Inventors, an organisation that encourages young people to express their imagination to the fullest. The best ideas submitted to Little Inventors will be made into real things by local professional makers, craftspeople and designers for exhibition.

We also offer a free downloadable Little Inventors Workshop pack for teachers or parents on our website.

To go straight to the new website visit www.littleinventors.org or read on for more details...

Little inventors encourages children between 5 and 12 to think up and draw their ideas with no limits or restrictions on the type of ideas they come up with. They could be huge or tiny, funny or bonkers, or perfectly useful solutions to every day problems and challenges.

For Little Inventors events the best ideas are made into prototypes by local professional makers, designers and manufacturers and then exhibited.

In many cases the children (with their parent/carer) are offered the possibility to visit the workshops and explain their ideas to the makers in more detail. Each little inventor is involved throughout the creation of their idea and retains copyright in their original drawing.

Little Inventors started from a successful project Dominic created in his home town of Sunderland in the North East of England. He asked 450 children to think up and draw their own invention ideas then asked local makers to make the best ones into real things. Out of 600 invention drawings, 23 were made into objects by skilled makers and manufacturers. The project, commissioned by The Cultural Spring, achieved worldwide publicity and over a thousand people visited the exhibition over two weeks. You can see the original project and all the ideas here. www.inventorsproject.co.uk