Making Waves: Inventing for a Better Ocean Judging Day
For one special day back in May, a group of challenge representatives came together as judges to pore over all of the ideas put forward by children across South Tyneside.
The students went all in, in the hopes of becoming a Making Waves winner!
The Making Waves: Inventing for a Better Ocean Challenge highlights the impact that our oceans have on our planet and, equally, the impact pollution and our actions as humans have on ocean life.
We need to build a better future for our oceans with science, invention, and innovation at the heart of it all. The more we understand our oceans, the better we can learn to look after them and bring them back to health.
We partnered with Dogger Bank Wind Farm and South Tyneside Council for this challenge, our second one as collaborators, following the success of the first challenge Powering the Future: South Tyneside and Beyond!
The Making Waves challenge comprised of three different invention challenges, one for each Key Stage 1-3, presented exclusively to children in South Tyneside.
The individual challenges focused on taking inspiration from and providing aid to life under the sea, whether it be inventing to protect ocean health or inventing a new way to travel across the big blue.
As with Powering the Future, a crucial step in the Making Waves project was the all-important judging day. Presented with every single idea, each thought up by a little inventor from the North East, the judges got to work weighing up all of the inventions and having an absolute whale of a time doing so.
The judging panel included Chief Inventor Dominic Wilcox, Alex Whelan (Economic Inclusion and Career Development Coordinator, South Tyneside Council), Kay Doragh (Community Investment Manager (Renewables), Dogger Bank Wind Farm), Amy Quinn (Head of Offshore Wind, RS Group), Lauren Brooks (Coastal Ecology Officer, COAST South Tyneside) and various representatives from South Tyneside Council.
The judging process was no small feat, with over 1,200 ideas received during the challenge's submission period.
Following much debate amongst the panel, championing their favourites, discussing the benefits and ingenuity of the ideas, and celebrating all of the ones that were unique, brilliant, and bonkers enough to be crowned winners, the inventions were finally whittled down to four worthy victors.
Dominic Wilcox, founder of Little Inventors, said: "It truly is amazing how we continue to be blown away by the ideas children from South Tyneside can come up with. Just like with the first challenge Powering the Future, the children are capable of thinking up the most ingenious solutions to complex, mature problems like ocean conversation.
It was a pleasure to take in all that creativity at once. The judging panel all felt very inspired and it was a lot of fun."
Alex Whelan said: "The judging panel was one of toughest days of work I’ve had in 2025 so far – the huge range of ideas we received was inspiring. Thankfully, our panel of experts kept us on track and helped us select the invention ideas we’ll see brought to life. I’m already looking forward to next years’ challenge and seeing even more invention ideas submitted by young people in South Tyneside."
Now that four winners have been selected, we move on to quite possibly the most exciting part of any challenge - bringing the ideas to life! The inventions will soon be realised by a team of talented makers, as little inventor and maker will work together to convert what was once just a thought in a bright spark's mind into a reality.
We will see the return of some spectacular makers like Ryder Architecture and North Star, who joined us for Powering the Future, and some fresh faces like Anton Steenken. Welcome aboard!
