This is a course of innovative sessions of one hour per week lasting 8 weeks covering everything an inventor needs to know. I started a "Young inventors" club at Cypress junior’s school in 2008 The very first members of B.I.T.E (Being Inventive Through Education) and the pupils came up with two fantastic ideas and won gold and a silver medal against 200 inventors and their inventions from around the World.

Here is the link to their website. www.cypressjuniors.co.uk/inventors You can also see how well they did when I accepted an invitation from Mr Torres for the school to take part in his annual Invention show, where they won four awards. The pupils have since been invited to several countries around the World and my friend and famous Spanish inventor Mr. Pep Torres wants to start a similar club that can be part of his fantastic M.I.BA building in the middle of Old Barcelona in Spain. Now the snowball will start to get larger as the idea grows from country to country and it is!

In the Croydon area it is indeed getting larger. As interest in the project spreads from school to school. is getting larger and larger as more and more schools around the borough want to join in, in fact it has attracted so much interest from local government and education chiefs that they are trying to get "Program 21 as part of the curriculum.

The Mayor of London's office and the Prime minister’s office have been informed of the progress of the clubs and their inventions. I am in the process of looking elsewhere to bring invention to those people that you may not associate with innovation, I have started a club in Coldingly Prison the first ever in one of one her Majesty's prisons and have already had talks with the Chairman of the Croydon wheelchair users association My idea stems from my time working as a volunteer for MENCAP at the West Norwood rehab where I taught "PEG WORK" so I naturally would like to start a club where people with disabilities could air their ideas, get the encouragement from working as a group and learn about inventions and hopefully invent something and show it at the 2012 British invention show in October.

I have already arranged for a free stand for them normally costing over £4500.00. I am hoping to get funding for a building to house our own museum to be known as M.I.LO (Museum of ideas London) in partnership with M.I.BA (Barcelona) The new building would be full of inventions from all over the British Iles and beyond as countries from around the world join in.

Other invention clubs would be invited to present their inventions alongside the ones from the children. Clubs would be welcome to visit it and use the facilities that I hope to eventually get. My time is totally free I just want to help if I can to make ordinary people aware of innovation and that there is someone to talk to, there is a club you can join to talk and share ideas with likeminded people. Here is my "Program 21” so you can see the type of sessions all my groups would participate in, naturally they won’t all apply as some sessions may take longer than expected, but generally 8 week’s should suffice.

Since writing this I have had meetings in Spain and The Spanish schools will also join up in Barcelona several schools and it would seem that if all the schools showing interest were in fact to join in the programme, it would be impossible to run successfully without the teachers at each school helping to run the club. I would start the club and mentor it over the next 8 weeks, and help if needed and available by phone email etc. If Mr. Alan Potter gets his way then all 140 schools in the borough will take part. Our aim is to have an Inter-school Innovation competition. The winners will be given a free stand at the annual “British Invention Show” (B.I.S) and possibly the runners up too, depending on the invention, idea, prototype etc.

Cypress will again lead the way with this project as they have won the competition for the past two years. Head Teacher Nikky Godetz and Mr. Patrick Morgan (Croydon’s Primary advisor) all backed by Mr. Alan Potter director of learning and inclusion for Croydon.

I will pop in from time to time, and keep a watchful eye out for any great innovations, and write a report on my findings.

Since the launching of this programme, in 2008, nine young inventors aged nine and ten from Cypress school. Were invited and travelled to Barcelona with me and three teachers, and won four awards for innovation!

Also the members of B.I.T.E have grown from one school with 24 Inventor pupil members to 18 schools and 810 inventor pupil members.

We have a huge competition every year and this year’s 2012 winners were once again CYPRESS juniors.
All the entries from the schools were judged by independent judges using the British Inventions society’s judging format.

Bill Currie.