Alexandra Park and Palace Charitable Trust and Little Inventors have today launched The Wildlife Challenge where budding young inventors aged up to 16 years old from the greater London area will be tasked with letting their imaginations run wild.

One of the biggest green spaces in London, Alexandra Park is home to over 319 different species – including 38 rare or protected species. The Wildlife Challenge will look to celebrate the space and the natural world by inviting young people to design a new invention to help one of the creatures found in the park. The winning inventions chosen by Alexandra Palace and Little Inventors, will be made into installations and displayed in the park later this year.

The young inventors taking part will be asked to research their chosen animal considering where they live, what they eat, what dangers they might face, how they move and what they need to stay healthy before they start their designs. The inventions, which could be anything from an animal’s dream home to a state-of-the-art feeding station, should be submitted as drawings using the upload page on the Alexandra Palace website. The deadline for all inventions is the 31st July 2020.

The launch of the Wildlife Challenge is being supported by CBBC presenter Naomi Wilkinson.  It is the second collaboration between Little Inventors and Alexandra Palace. In 2019, children across Haringey, Hackney, Waltham Forest, Islington, Camden, Enfield and Barnet were invited to come up with a new invention inspired by the innovative spirit of famous adventurers, aeronauts and by Alexandra Palace, which has itself been home to inventors and innovators for the past 140 years. Four of the designs were chosen, made into models and displayed in the newly opened Creativity Pavilion in Alexandra Palace’s East Court.

Louise Stewart, Alexandra Park and Palace Charitable Trust chief executive said: “Creativity and invention is imbedded in the history of Ally Pally and the team we have here. This meant we were able to quickly move our creative learning programme, funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, online and continue our work during the pandemic, to give young people the opportunity to participate and have a lasting input on the park. As a charity this programme is important to us, engaging different audiences in new ways and we are looking forward to seeing all the great ideas.”

For more information about Ally Pally’s Little Inventors Wildlife Challenge visit https://allypally.littleinventors.org/