Register your interest for Blueprint Challenge: A Future Highstreet 2024 today.
Congratulations to all the students who took part in Blueprint Challenge: A Future Highstreet 2023!
About TechFest’s Blueprint Challenge: A Future High Street Competition
The city High street plays a unique and fundamental role in today's society. More than just a place to shop, the high street is also an area of cultural, social and economic importance. However, it is a sad fact that most high streets are poorly equipped to address the threats that urbanisation places on natural resources, ecosystems and the climate. If left unchecked, this places a very real threat on our overall wellbeing and the future of our planet. We must work together as champions of nature to create urban spaces that work for both people and the planet in order to ensure their long-term viability.
Imagine a high street where buying your favorite products leads to more nature, not less, where natural wealth is celebrated and economy thrives, where the air you breath is pure and fresh, and birdsong no longer competes with traffic.
For the Blueprint Challenge: A Future High Street project, TechFest, supported by Bluewater, challenged S3 - S6 students to design a high street and create a space that allows society to thrive whilst simultaneously celebrating the natural world.
This project spans a range of different disciplines (engineering, architecture, art and design, health and wellbeing, etc.), and as such we recommended that students create diverse teams showcasing different skill sets. By bringing energy, technology and nature together there is the opportunity to create a high street that employs innovative technologies and mechanisms in the drive towards net-zero, nature-positive urban areas.
2023 competition winners
1st place: Las Chicas team from Oldmachar Academy, Aberdeen
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2nd place: CBGKS team from Mearns Academy, Laurencekirk
The Creativity Award went to: Streets Revive Team from Morgan Academy, Dundee
Highly Commended nomination: OLSP LfS, Our Lady & St Patrick's High School, Dumbarton
Congratulations to all the winners!
For any queries related to this project, please contact Gabija Blazyte at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
A collaboration between Aberdeen Science Centre 
and TechFest, supported by the Institute of Physics (IOP), the ‘Space into Energy’ programme gives young people a glimpse into the inner workings of these exciting fields and how the skill sets required for each sector often overlap.
Featuring experts from each industry, participants will learn about innovation, teamwork and leadership through hands-on activities and interactive sessions, empowering them to discover their unique talents and how they can be the problem-solvers of the future.
We’re packing a whole range of activities into our programme with activities for all ages. From family days at Aberdeen Science Centre to interviews with industry professionals, there is something to inspire everyone.
The programme will be available to download very soon. Follow us on our social media channels for updates.
Sponsoring Space into Energy
We are thrilled to have a fantastic group of generous sponsors and supporters who are helping us bring the Space into Energy programme to as many young people across the North East of Scotland as possible.
If you’d like to join them, download our Space into Energy Sponsorship Proposal here for more information about how your business can benefit from getting involved.
Need more Space into Energy?
As the programme continues, we’ll be uploading informative resources here so that even if you can’t be at one of our events, you can still be a part of Space into Energy.
An Audience with an Astronaut
Watch this video of a conversation with astronauts Carl Walz and Mike Bloomfield, with commentary from Jim McNab from Oceaneering.
Click here for the rest of the series.
Listen to Space into Energy podcast series.
Sponsored and supported by
In partnership with the British Science Association, TechFest is working with schools to run a Machines of the Future Discovery Day event. TechFest will provide online teacher training to ensure that the participating teachers have everything they require to run the event in school. In addition, participating schools can apply for up to £500 funding to cover overhead costs (printing, paper, pens, etc.) and, as the project is sponsored by the British Science Association, each students Discovery Day CREST award will be paid for.
The Discovery Day project is aimed towards pupils from P6 up to S2.
This is a great project to introduce pupils at an early age to machine learning which is used in everyday life. The 5 hour project is made up of 3 workshops and includes a challenge where students get the opportunity to work in a group together to design a household product which uses machine learning.
1) Would you trust a machine? - students will sort out different potential machine learning jobs based on their usefulness and how much they would trust a machine to do the job.
2) Machine Learning now - students will look at video case studies, investigating how machine learning works in a real-life context, how different data and sourced are used in AI systems, and illustrating how these tools use machine learning.
3) Teach a Machine - in groups students experiment with machine learning using a range of different AI powered tools.
Challenge - Students will work in groups to research and plan to design a household product with the opportunity to present their work at the end of the Discovery Day.
Watch below a video of Professor Brian Cox explaining why this a great opportunity for schools to get involved with and to get a real feel for the project.
Disclaimer: Limited number of places available, applications not guaranteed.
For enquiries and how to sign up please contact Kirsty Cranna on email at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
For more information visit the Machines of the Futures materials which are available on the CREST website.
