Thousands descend onto Darlington for Festival of Ingenuity

The festival, which is now in its fourth year, has been designed as a free family fun day and an opportunity to showcase Darlington and County Durham firms to the up and coming workforce.

The festival includes stall holders with representatives from industries within science, technology and engineering sectors - pioneering products and even a 'robot' that has been seen speaking to visitors. 

This robot spoke to children at Darlington's riverside area Picture: JIM SCOTT

The Market Square has been taken over by a large marquee, which is mainly housing exhibitions and staff from EE, Nifco, Modus and Cleveland Bridge.

Engine manufacturer Cummins have also chosen the Festival of Ingenuity to celebrate their 100th anniversary as a business.

Outside the marquee, RTC North, Durham Police and the County Durham & Darlington Fire and Rescue Service have been showing off their skills with demonstrations and open conversations, since the festival opened at 11am. 

Throughout the day, the riverside area near to the DL1 development is hosting food stalls from Darlington-based eateries, while live music is being performed on stage. 

The Festival of Ingenuity has taken over Darlington's town centre Video: JIM SCOTT

Seth Pearson, curator at Darlington Partnership who organised the event, said: "We're thrilled, this is the fourth year we have run the event.

"It is a way of showing the people of Darlington the businesses here and it's also about how we can encourage young people to get involved in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics so they can understand the bright future they can have by getting into this industry.

"We have ingenious businesses and the main aim is to show young people and get them excited about it, but if their parents aren't involved, then the children won't be, so this event is a way we can do this.

"Mums and dads are seeing what's going on and they start to change their attitudes towards engineering and see that their kids can have a good career in engineering.

"We wanted to bring as many people as we could into Darlington town centre and I am just delighted that we have achieved that."

Jonathan Miller of Cummins Darlington Picture: JIM SCOTT

Jonathan Miller, community involvement team leader and technology specialist at Cummins Darlington, said: "It's a remarkable year for us, it's our 100th anniversary, not many businesses have withstood the test of time and been a business for 100 years.

"The Darlington plant has been here for over 50 years, opening in 1965, but part of our core values is that we look at how the business was founded and that is community.

"We're only as successful as the community around us and as we look forward to the future and how we improve, we recognise that we need our community.

"We're here to show the community that Cummins doesn't just make engines, we're a quite diverse powertrain supplier and we have a very rich heritage in engineering.

"Today, we have many different types of individual here from Cummins supporting us, from finance, supply-chain, marketing, engineering, development and manufacturing and as we look at 100 years of being a business.

"There's many different roles within Cummins that we need to talk about, influence and educate the people of the future, and that's why we're here today."

• It's expected that the festival will continue until 6pm