Next Stop: The Future! Workshops at Locomotion

We felt right at home bringing the challenge to the Locomotion museum in Shildon.

The progression of the railway spans centuries, accompanying our lives from the humble wagonway through to modernity.

The historic buildings associated with Timothy Hackworth (an English steam locomotive engineer based in Shildon) and the early days of the Stockton & Darlington Railway are an integral part of Locomotion's site.

The museum underpins Shildon's place amongst the highlights of the story of rail travel. It is home to the biggest undercover collection of historic rail vehicles in Europe.

The exhibitions and models within are visually stunning, steeped in history, and simply bursting with free, educational, and fun activities. It was the perfect place to present two Little Inventors workshops to local primary school children.

Zooming on over from a school named after the pioneer himself, students from Timothy Hackworth Primary School enjoyed an amazing session during which they were absolutely encouraged to let their imagination go off the rails.

Our Next Stop: The Future! Challenge is in partnership with S&DR200, organisers of the vast program of events celebrating the 200th anniversary of the first journey on the Stockton and Darlington Railway.

The S&DR200 Festival will present a series of free large-scale outdoor spectacles, events, exhibitions and new art commissions in the public spaces, libraries and world-class museums of County Durham and Tees Valley from March to November 2025.

Our contribution to the festival is a challenge guaranteed to take your creativity on an evolving, winding, and totally unique journey! We are asking children to invent something fun, clever, or unusual that can travel on or make use of tracks.

The students from Timothy Hackworth Primary got their thinking caps on and got to work designing their own invention and they couldn't find more inspiration than being surrounded by all the wonders of the museum.