Challenge Winners create prototype of their winning entry

Fidgit Winners

The Climate Week Challenge is Britain’s biggest environmental competition. In March 2011 over 140,000 people took part by coming up with a green idea to save or make money.

The competition for ages 11-14 was won by five bright young sparks from Pool Academy in Cornwall. They came up with the concept of the Fidgit – a product which turns the energy generated by fidgeting kids into electricity for recharging personal gadgets.

Climate Week arranged for the girls to travel up to London, spending a day turning their brilliant idea into a real prototype. This was done at the Arcola Energy Lab in Dalston, with the assistance of the eccentric engineer and educator Matt Venn.

With Matt’s guidance, the girls learned, assembled, and tinkered, until they had produced their very own working Fidgit. A couple of minutes of fidgeting was enough to start filling up the batteries on their mobile phones.

The Climate Week Challenge gave students the chance to see climate change from a new perspective. Rather than simply understanding the issue in terms of a far-off catastrophe, they were asked to identify an immediate opportunity that could help make or save people money. The strength of their ideas shows how just how much they engaged with the brief. It was particularly impressive to see how they drew on their own experience – such as needing to constantly recharge personal gadgets – for inspiration, and to watch them think through the detail, such as creating the final product from recycled materials.
Chris Challis, Teacher at Pool Academy