#HighPeakYouthRobotics

High Peak Youth Robotics 2025/2026

We set-up this new youth group in September 2024 to enable a group of young people to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge, a national robotics competition. FIRST aims to make science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) more fun and inclusive. You can find out more about the Challenge on the FIRST website here.

This is the second year of us running the group. The main objective of the project is to compete in the FIRST Tech Challenge regional competition event in March 2026.

We’re pleased to announce that, this year, we will be running two Challenge teams, made up of younger and older members of the group.

We will host weekly, term-time workshops between September 2025 and March 2026 at St Anne’s Community Centre to work towards this. These will be delivered by members of the Funny Wonders team, led by Dave Lydford of Not Just Bricks (and formally Brick Corner). Dave also runs the FIRST LEGO League for younger participants. Some local engineers also come along to offer advice and support to the group.

Thanks

The second year is supported by contributions from BlueSpark Foundation, Buxton4Youth, Duke of Devonshire Charitable Trust, Derbyshire County Council Community Leadership Fund, High Peak Borough Council Councillor Initiative Fund, Neater Solutions Ltd, Buxton Lime, Tarmac Tunstead, Altrad Belle, Buxton Rotary Club, SCAN Computers, Derbyshire Freemasons plus private donations via GoFundMe and the group’s fundraising activities, and a bursary from FIRST UK.

If you would like to support the group, please see the GoFundMe at https://www.gofundme.com/f/power-up-the-peak-high-peak-youth-robotics-202526-season

Participants

We have places for 15 young people in the group and the Challenge is open to those 12-18 years old.

Whilst open to all young people in the High Peak aged 12-18 years old, we particularly look to welcome those with neurodiversity, those who are home-educated or not in education, those feeling isolated, or those who experience barriers to accessing (or enjoying) STEM subjects in their traditional form whilst at school.

We also aim to have 50:50 split of boys and girls. As such, some places may be held to help us achieve this.

Workshops

The workshops are free to attend and take place on term-time Tuesday evenings, 6pm to 8pm in the Main Room at St Anne’s Community Centre off Hardwick Square West (SK17 6PX).

The venue is wheelchair accessible and has a small carpark.

Safeguarding

Funny Wonders has a comprehensive Safeguarding Policy and working procedures. All members of the delivery team undergo enhanced DBS checks and safeguarding awareness training. All activities and venues are risk-assessed with mental health and wellbeing, physical safety, data privacy and environmental impact all considered.

Sign Up

If you would like to apply for a place for a young person, please complete the form below and we will be in touch.

Once our places are full, we operate a waitlist, should any spaces open up. To join the waitlist, please email highpeakyouthrobotics@funnywonders.org.uk.

Sign Up

We currently have 15 participants signed-up to the group so have no further spaces. However, we are operating a waiting list should any spaces become available.

If you would like to apply for a young person to be added to the waiting list, please complete the form below.

The questions are designed to provide us with logistical information, to ensure we are reaching our target group (as per the grant funding we have obtained to deliver the project) and to ensure we have a diverse group of young people.

The information you provide will be used and held in accordance with our Data Protection & Confidentiality Policy and will not be shared. By completing the form, your consent for us to collect your data is implied. You can find our full Privacy Statement on our Policy & Procedure page here.

Workshops

Workshops took place between 17 September 2024 and 29 April 2025. Activities have included: teamwork puzzles, design, learning about the challenge – what we need the robot to be able to do (and the many, many rules!), unboxing the robotics kit, setting up the laptop with the comms/coding software, building the robot base and getting the robot base to speak to the control unit. We also had a visit from a FIRST representive who answered some of our questions and two local engineers – J Michaelis from Neater Solutions Ltd and Dave Goodway – who helped to refine the robot design.

Regionals

We attended the FIRST regional scrimmage in Chesterfield in December 2024, a friendly event to meet other teams, check on our progress and have the opportunity to practice in the competition field arena; and the regional competition in Sheffield in March 2025. The team won all their qualifying matches and then placed second overall, following the play-off matches, qualifying for the national finals in the process. They also won the judges’ Think Award for problem-solving. Read more about the day on our news post here.

Buxton Rotary Fair

To promote the group, raise some funds and practise for nationals, members of the team and group had a stall at the Buxton Rotary Summer Fair & Charity Bazaar at the Pavilion Gardens on Saturday 31 May 2025. We demonstrated the robot and ran some guess competitions: the name of the robot, the number of bolts on the robot, the weight of the robot; and the number of nuts and bolts in a jar. Members of the group also made some “Billerobot” keyrings, as part of the 50th anniversary celebrations of The Billerettes at the fair. We sold out on the day but are taking orders to make more: if you’d like one, please get in touch!

Thanks to Outwood Academy Newbold for the loan of their challenge arena. It fit in our space with only centimetres to spare!

Nationals

FIRST UK National Championships at the Copper Box Arena in London on 26-27 June 2025. Read about their experience on our news blog here.