As a co-sponsor, TCL Cumbria has been working with several university academics and as from 1 August 2025 agreement has been reached to collaborate on the Handmade with STEAM project. This is an open competition in its third year for both school pupils/students and home learners.
You can read more about the competition here: https://www.handmadewithsteam.net/competition
Handmade with STEAM competition – new round launched
The Handmade with STEAM competition for 2025-26 is now open for students between ages 11-16. The successful participants will be given a budget of £50 to use towards purchasing materials for the construction of their design on:
(a) a musical instrument that provides a sensory environment other than only sound.
(b) an automatic device that can collect rubbish from the surface of a pond.
(c) a hydroponic system that provides a solution to grow food in small spaces.
(d) a device of their own that helps to improve climate or biodiversity.
(e) a device of their own that encourages social transformation or cultural exchange.
Competition Timeline
1 August 2025: announcement of competition; registration of interest is open
30 September 2025: registration of interest is closed; a selection process follows, and successful participants will be informed by mid-October 2025
1 November 2025: project work commences
1 May 2026: deadline for project submission with relevant paperwork
By the end of May 2026: project judging, announcement of winners and virtual award ceremony.
Winners of the competition will be invited to participate in the Pitch for the Planet 2026 which will be hosted by Project Earth (https://projectearth.global/ ) at the Royal Institution, London, on 26th June 2026.
About Us
Ian Stephenson is a mechanical engineer and inventor. Throughout his career he has established many business-to-education partnerships and has mentored many student projects. Ian has been working with the Engineering and Physics Departments at Lancaster University since 2014, initially on a fluid dynamics concept supported by the Centre for Global Eco-Innovation and more recently on a novel compact hydro-energy device, with funding from Innovate UK. With a passion for the outdoors and environmental issues, Ian aims at developing projects in line with the Envision 2030 ambitions towards Affordable Energy, Zero Hunger, Good Health & Wellbeing, Sustainable Cities & Communities, Responsible Consumption & Production, Climate Action and Life On Land. Ian is the director of TCL-CUMBRIA.
Cristina Lazzeroni graduated in 1992 from the University of Pisa in Italy with a research in particle physics on beauty meson decays. She did a PhD at the same University on beauty production at an experiment at CERN. She then moved to UK where she has worked on kaon and beauty physics ever since. In 2007 she joined the University of Birmingham and she is currently a professor in particle physics. She is also an enthusiastic communicator and has been holding a STFC public engagement fellowship. She has been the Spokesperson of the NA62 CERN experiment in 2019-2022 and she has won the Institute of Physics Meitner Medal and Prize in 2019 for her work on public engagement.
Maria Pavlidou graduated in 1988 from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens in Greece with a research in space physics. She did a PhD at Cardiff University on the acoustics of the classical guitar. She has been a secondary school teacher in Greece and in UK for many decades and an Ogden Trust Teacher Fellow at the University of Birmingham, focussing on outreach and public engagement. In 2020 Maria established Galileo’s Voyage, a science education company that specialises in physics and astronomy.
After a physics degree and research at the University of Chicago, Becky taught in a variety of schools and was Senior Lecturer in physics at the University of Kent. She set up the Institute for Research in Schools to support school students and teachers doing authentic research through a wide range of projects in STEM. She is now a teacher at Simon Langton Girls’ Grammar School where she is particularly keen to empower school students to act and innovate to help tackle the climate crisis.
Becky was awarded an MBE in 2008 and received an Honorary Fellowship of the Institute of Physics in 2014. In the summer of 2016, she was awarded the Kavli Education Medal from the Royal Society
