Anorak hero and inventor extraordinaire Dominic Wilcox has spent the last few months inspiring school kids from his hometown of Sunderland to come up with their own inventions. He then asked local makers to pick a few and turn them into actual real things. The results? An amazing array of brilliant ideas such as a ladybird umbrella, a family scooter and a flying skipping rope.
"When I left school I wasn't sure what I wanted to do in life," explains Dominic. "I quite liked painting so I did an Art and Design Foundation course at Sunderland University. On the course was a conceptual artist and tutor called Charlie Holmes. He showed me a book of strange and thought provoking inventions and asked if I could try to think of some myself. I found I could do it well and I have been doing it all my life ever since. I wanted to give something back to my home town and do what Charlie did for me. I decided to ask over 450 children to draw their own invention ideas then asked local makers and manufacturers to make some of them into real things. We had a big exhibition and around 1000 people came to see it."
Such an inspired project!
The INVENTORS! project was commissioned by The Cultural Spring who are funded by the Arts Council England to bring art and culture to Sunderland and South Tyneside.