#HighPeakYouthRobotics
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!
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 set about designing the project and securing funding to deliver the project over the 2023/2024 academic year. Unfortunately, we didn’t receive enough funding in time but continued to fundraise.
Eventually, we secured enough funding and we launched the new group in September 2024. In the first year, we ran one FTC team. Amazingly, they reached the national finals in London! In our second year, we ran two FTC teams. Our senior team reached the national finals again, placing in the top 20 teams!
We are now into our third season, for the 2026/2027 academic year.
If anyone would like to volunteer to support the group, either at workshops or with fundraising, please get in touch.
Thanks
High Peak Youth Robotics has been supported by the following grant-making organisations (in alphabetical order): BlueSpark Foundation, Buxton4Youth, Derbyshire County Council Community Leadership Fund, Derbyshire Freemasons, Duke of Devonshire Charitable Trust, Foundation Derbyshire, The Gosling Foundation, Herefordshire Community Foundation (Joanies Fund), High Peak Borough Council Councillor Initiative Fund, High Peak Mayoral Charity (Buxton & District), Institute of Physics (East Midlands Branch), Vernon Robert Bowmer Charitable Trust.
The project has also been supported by the following local companies/organisations (in alphabetical order): Altrad Belle, Breedon, Buxton Lime, Buxton Rotary Club, FIRST UK, Lhoist Hindlow, Neater Solutions Ltd, Otter Controls Ltd, PCRefurb, SCAN Computers, Smart Engineering, Tarmac Tunstead, Timpson, You Make Robots.
Private donations have also been made via GoFundMe and the group’s fundraising activities.
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