Led by Fun Robotics, hands-on workshop at the 12-day Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival helps children apply design thinking principles through trial, error, and play

Sharjah, April 28, 2025 

It was a day of balancing creativity, structure, and imagination at the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival on Saturday for scores of budding designers who gathered with tapes, bamboo skewers, and boundless creativity to take on a fun challenge: solve real-world problems through design thinking.

The hands-on workshop, “Think and Design”, saw children tasked with a deceptively simple challenge: build the tallest, strongest tower possible using only bamboo skewers and craft materials. The exercise was designed not just to entertain, but to introduce basic principles of design thinking, engineering, and problem-solving.

Artist leads young participants in a hands-on workshop, transforming everyday objects
into tools of creativity at the Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival

Sharjah, April 28, 2025

Finnish artist, and this year’s Sharjah Children’s Reading Festival (SCRF) Illustration Award winner, Laura Merz, is capturing children’s imaginations with her unconventional drawing and colouring workshop, “Strange Creatures”, at the ongoing 12-day event.