About TechFest’s Blueprint Challenge: A Future High Street Competition
The Blueprint Challenge invites secondary school pupils from across Aberdeen City to reimagine their local high streets as vibrant, sustainable spaces where energy, nature, and community come together. By fusing innovative technologies with environmental awareness, pupils will explore how to create net-zero, nature-positive urban spaces that meet the needs of modern life.
In designing their Future High Street, pupils will consider key themes, including:
Students will research inspirational examples of high streets and explore how STEM-based solutions could be applied to their own communities. They can focus on specific areas such as Rosemount, Torry, or take on the broader challenge of redesigning Union Street. This is a digital project with the exeption of the showcase, where students will showcase their designs to a panel of judges at a local venue in Aberdeen.
Support & Resources
To help bring their ideas to life, pupils will be supported by the TechFest team alongside experts from academia and industry. Supporting resources will be sent to registered schools upon project launch.
Creativity Meets Innovation
Pupils are encouraged to present their designs in any format they choose—this might include:
Project timeline
Teams to register by Thursday, 28 August 2025
Project launch (project support materials sent out to registered schools): September 2025 (date TBC)
Design submission: January 2026 (date TBC)
Project showcase & prize giving: February 2026 (date TBC)
2023 competition winners
1st place: Las Chicas team from Oldmachar Academy, Aberdeen
. 
TechFest would like to extend our thanks to Bluewater Private Equity Firm for their invaluable support in bringing the Blueprint Challenge: A Future High Street to life.
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.
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.
