High Peak Youth Robotics

In 2023, we were contacted by a group of young people about helping them set up a youth group so that they could participate in the FIRST Tech Challenge, a national robotics competition for 12-18 year olds. Robots are a bit of a detour away from Funny Wonders’ usual, traditional craft activities but, as it is a creative challenge (albeit a bit more high-tech than we’re used to) and we’d be supporting young people in our local community, we decided to go with it!

We set about designing the project and securing funding to deliver the project over the 2024/2025 academic year.

The FIRST Tech Challenge is a national scheme “committed to making science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) less intimidating, more diverse and inclusive with a vision of creating a world where young people are empowered to explore, challenge and grow into innovators, who will take on tomorrow’s challenges”. Find out more at firstuk.org/. It follows on from FIRST’s LEGO League, a competition for younger children. Local sessions for this are run at LEGO cafe, Brick Corner (On The Move) on Market Street.

We launched the new group in September 2024. During the first year, the group placed second in their regional competition, qualifying for the national finals in June 2025! Read more about the year here.

We are now preparing for the 2025/2026 project. If anyone would like to volunteer to support the group, either at workshops or with fundraising, please get in touch.

Thanks

The first year of High Peak Youth Robotics club was made possible through funding from Herefordshire Community Foundation (Joanies Fund) plus further grants and donations from Buxton4Youth, Tarmac, Timpson, High Peak Mayoral Charity (Buxton & District), Buxton Rotary Club and Otter Controls Ltd. We are also in receipt of a bursary from FIRST UK to enable us to participate and grateful to Buxton-based Smart Engineering and Manchester-based You Make Robots for contributing robot and robotics parts.

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.