From poo to panel: our journey with little inventor Ethan

It all started with The Power of Poo.

Almost 4 years ago, 10-year-old Ethan sat hunched over his Little Inventors worksheet, sketching away from his classroom in Cramlington Village Primary School. He drew the wires, turbine, cogs and solar panel that make up The Power of Poo, an invention that transforms poo into electricity.

With his drawing complete, he wrote down a description: There’s a chain reaction of machines like a giant bug, they flap their wings and power a wind turbine moving cogs that raise a solar panel to the sun powering your home and a special pad in the sky propelled up by electricity, sensing for when global warming gets to much, firing an eco-friendly flare that explodes warning the world about global warming.

Ethan’s idea was a winning one, one of 15 we brought to life during our Pioneers! challenge. The challenge invited young people across the North East to invent to generate energy, save energy, or use energy better.

We have a video of Ethan at the time, showing off his idea. He announces the machine’s name and giggles, pushing his worksheet towards the camera.

He describes how his invention helps our environment and maturely touches on why this matters, “as soon as I was aware that all of this energy that isn’t renewable could potentially kill the environment, I just felt like I had to act on it.”

In typical Little Inventors fashion, Ethan met with the maker who would bring The Power of Poo to life, animator Harry Johnston. Together they developed a 3D animation of the idea. Northumbrian Water was so impressed, they invited Ethan for a visit to see how sewage is processed.

“Having a single person see something in my idea that I spent hours and hours on, it makes me feel as if I’ve done something good. Very good. Majorly good,” Ethan tells Harry during their initial meeting over Zoom.

February 2023 saw a new challenge presented to the children of the North East (South Tyneside specifically) called Powering the Future: South Tyneside and Beyond! in partnership with Dogger Bank Wind Farm and South Tyneside Council.

During the planning phase, our team was in pursuit of a charismatic and creative young person with a suitably Geordie accent to boot. We instantly thought of Ethan and asked him to act as the face of Powering the Future and appear in the promotional video introducing the challenge.

“I was really excited and happy I was asked to be part of the video as I think that Little Inventors is an amazing idea and seeing someone who took part in a previous challenge could make others more inspired to try it themselves,” said Ethan of his starring role.

In the run-up to the adjudication day in which Little Inventors and representatives from South Tyneside Council, Dogger Bank Wind Farm, Equinor, Port of Tyne and North Star would pick the challenge winners, we were eager for Ethan to be included in this key part of the process.

It’s all well and good for our team and our partners to select the winners but we wanted to put our ethos of thinking like a child into practice and add the opinions of young people into the mix.

Subsequently Ethan, as well as Rachael from the South Tyneside Young Peoples Parliament, joined us on the adjudication panel, pouring over more than 50 shortlisted Powering the Future entries. They added two vital voices that helped whittle the ideas down to the final four winners.

“I've always loved Little Inventors and continuing to work with them has led to so many opportunities I wouldn't have had otherwise,” Ethan commented. “I am extremely grateful to keep working with them.”

Now 13, he hopes to harness his creative prowess for use in his future career: “I would love to do something related to space when I'm older. I think space is fascinating and the job would need creativity because you would need to be creative to design and build machines and devices to help people explore and live in space.”

We wish you luck Ethan! Whether little, medium, or big inventor, we are always here to take ideas seriously and let creativity and playfulness lead the way.