Collusion's Maker Challenge 2015 challenged four small multi-disciplinary teams of volunteers led by artists to develop a 'smart city' idea and design a prototype project using technology to address Cambridge's wicked problems, aka, problems that are difficult to solve. At their disposal each team had a £250 budget, the wide ranging expertise of their team members and the use of Makespace, Cambridge's community workshop for making and fixing things.

Here's a summary of the projects:

• Team 1: A prototype for a new concept around public lighting in Cambridge, re-imagining the traditional "Richardson Candles" as a mixture of light source, information source and art installation
• Team 2: Future Cambridge - enter the virtual city and start to shape the future yourself! Using a Minecraft recreation of Mill Road, find out how population rise, floods/climate change and the greening of the city could impact in Cambridge up in 2030 and beyond.
• Team 3: Remarketing the market - looking anew at the Market Square with a view to creating some new stall option ideas, new layout possibilities and new configurations to allow a multi-purpose space for a range of evening and night time activities - including film screenings on the guildhall, and early evening participatory events.
• Team 4: Innovative ways to address the imminent and long-range concerns about social isolation in the ageing population of Cambridge by enhancing the capacity of existing social technologies to welcome and encourage new participation across social divides, as well as working out ways that 'old technology' (e.g postal services & print media) could function better to also deliver these benefits.

You can find out more about Maker Challenge and Collusion here http://www.collusion.org.uk/Maker-Challenge

Maker Challenge is presented by Collusion and supported by Red Gate, the University of Cambridge Science Festival and Arts Council England.