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Regents Park Community College National Lionheart Champions 2008
Imagine having less than a day to come up with a great idea, produce complex business plans for it, create pictures of your design, then pitch the whole idea to an expert panel of Judges in a packed hall. It's a tall order, but that's exactly the task faced by the 14-to-15-year-old students who took part in The LionHeart Challenge. Winning The LionHeart Challenge is by no means easy. First came the in-school heats. Here over 30,000 students from schools in every region of England battled it out in teams of ten for the right to represent their school in the next round. The champion school teams then descended on Liverpool on the 9th and 10th of July to take part in the Regional Finals. By the end of the day, the judges had selected just 13 Regional Champions to progress to the grand final. These champions then went head to head in the National Finals, held on 14th July 2008 at St. George's Hall, Liverpool. The winners would take away the prestigious title of LionHeart National Winners 2008 The challenge theme for the grand final was kept secret until the last moment: "to conceptualise, design and create a product or device which will become a major aid to 'crime prevention' in the UK." By 2 p.m. marks had already been scored for numerous parts of the challenge, and just one task remained: for each team to deliver their Final Presentation at the Evening Banquet & Awards Ceremony.
Come the evening, St. George's Hall began to fill with each of the champion teams, their teachers, their experts, their judges - all dressed for the black tie event. The hall was packed with some 200 people.
Sitting on the prestigious judging panel were national figures, the drivers of business and industry, including Liam Stacy, Managing Director of MAXON Computer Ltd.; Simon Topman, Deputy President of the British Chambers of Commerce; Rod Hill, Past National President of the Chartered Institute of Management Consultants; Diane Earles, Regional Director of the Chartered Institute of Marketing; and Helen King, Assistant Chief Constable of Merseyside Police.
And the winners?
Regents Park Community College took the title of LionHeart National Winners 2008, for their product 'FlashGlass' - a glass for pubs, bars and restaurants that changes colour when an unknown substance is put into the glass.
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