JOY LAB Exhibition at Culture House

12 September – 31 October 2026 @ Culture House, Sunderland

Joy Lab arrives at Sunderland’s brand-new Culture House this September, bringing together imaginative ideas from children and adults across Sunderland and South Tyneside — including a collection of winning inventions that have been developed and brought to life in all sorts of creative ways.

JOY LAB was created to celebrate 10 years of Little Inventors and has been made possible with funding from Arts Council England, The Cultural Spring, Sunderland Culture, South Tyneside Council and the University of Sunderland. The project was delivered with support from Atlas Theatre Company, who helped bring the programme to life through workshops and creative engagement with participants across the region.

The challenge invited people to dream up inventions that could make someone feel happier, calmer, more confident, less lonely — or simply make them laugh.

More than 1,000 invention ideas were submitted to Joy Lab overall. The exhibition brings together the winning ideas alongside dozens more that caught our imagination along the way.

Visitors can see winning inventions transformed into working models, developed prototypes, animation and cardboard creations, showing that there is no single way to take a brilliant idea from the page and bring it to life.

Among them is the Feel Good Friend, inspired by three different Joy Lab ideas: Lauren’s Affirmation Vending Machine, Louise’s Positivity Popper and 11-year-old Aubery’s Nature Globe. Their ideas have been combined into one playful creation designed to offer a little boost of positivity when somebody needs it.

Other winning ideas, including the Soggy No More, have also been developed with creative professionals to explore how an imaginative idea on paper might work in the real world.

“Joy Lab shows that invention doesn’t always have to be about solving huge problems. Sometimes a wonderfully imaginative idea that makes somebody smile, feel better or experience a little moment of joy can be just as valuable. It’s fantastic to see so many of those ideas together at Culture House.”

Dominic Wilcox, Founder and Chief Inventor, Little Inventors

Grand Opening — Saturday 12 September

Joy Lab opens as part of the grand opening of Culture House, giving visitors the chance to be among the first to explore both the new building and the exhibition.

Little Inventors founder and Chief Inventor Dominic Wilcox will be at Joy Lab during the opening day, with some of the inventors, makers and others involved in the project also expected to visit at different points during the day.

Visitors can also sit down and become inventors themselves, dreaming up their own answer to the Joy Lab challenge:

What can you invent to bring a moment of happiness to someone’s day?

Ideas created during the exhibition will be uploaded to the Little Inventors website, adding a whole new collection of inventions to the Joy Lab story.

More ideas to discover

The winning inventions are only part of the exhibition.

With more than 1,000 ideas submitted to Joy Lab, choosing the winners was no easy task. Large display boards showcase dozens of other submissions that we loved but which weren’t ultimately selected to be brought to life.

Expect thoughtful, clever, funny, surprising and wonderfully bonkers inventions from people of all ages — each offering its own take on how a little moment of joy might be created.

Joy Lab is open at Culture House from Saturday 12 September until Saturday 31 October 2026.

Come along, explore the ideas, see what happened when some of them were brought to life — and invent something of your own.

All photos taken by Dominic Wilcox.