A North East festival that brings together innovators to try to tackle a host of environmental and societal problems has revealed it will return in 2021.
Northumbrian Water's fifth Innovation Festival will be held on October 18 and will run for four days.
The event is expected to attract thousands of creative minds from around the world, who will work together in a series of design sprints, hacks and workshops aimed at solving big challenges.
These challenges include net zero carbon, sustainability, world water poverty, and breaking down the digital divide.
In an effort to reduce disruption from Covid-19 the festival will be held in a hybrid format, bringing together the best parts of physical events with a number of digital showcases.
The plan is to bring innovators together in smaller hubs and physically work together on projects, which will then feed into the wider digital event. Hubs are planned for locations across the 海角视频, Europe, Australia and the US.
To celebrate its fifth year of running, the theme for the 2021 event is The Brilliant Get-Together.
Nigel Watson, information services director at Northumbrian Water Group, said: 鈥淲e鈥檙e really excited about Innovation Festival 2021 and looking forward to our most ambitious event yet.
鈥淭he choice to make it a hybrid festival and mix the digital and physical events together is great and means we get the very best of both worlds.
鈥淲here we can, we鈥檒l have people physically working together back in shared spaces and alongside one another co-creating safely, which will be fantastic to see.
鈥淎nd with the digital side of the festival we can also add festival-goers from anywhere across the world into the mix.
鈥淲e saw the benefits of this last year when we had people from lots of different continents, and time zones, taking part in our sprints. It was fantastic to see and brought a whole other dimension to our thinking and ideas. I can鈥檛 wait to see who we reach this year and what ideas we come up with.
鈥淭he theme for this year is the 鈥楾he Brilliant Get-Together鈥, and that is simply what the event will be. A brilliant gathering of amazing people from all corners of the globe, coming together to innovate and help play their part in changing the world.鈥
Businesses such as Microsoft, Aiimi, CK, Delta, Wood Group, and Google will join forces with SMEs, charities and community groups to help solve the challenges laid out at the event.
Previous festivals have seen successful projects and innovations come from them such as an underground measuring device 鈥楾he Power of Z鈥 and the rural IOT sensor 鈥楧ragonfly鈥.
One of the most successful projects is Underground Mapping - an idea spawned at the 2018 festival and which was thrust into the national spotlight after Rishi Sunak highlighted the need for innovation during his Budget.
