Boy’s out of this world award

Peter Bridgeland, if Sheffield, won the contest which involved children being asked to create a night sky or space picture inspired by the shapes created with Spirograph, a geometric drawing toy.

Pictures were judged by a panel including team members from the distributor of heritage creative toy, Flair PLC and also by Helen Sharman​​​​​​, the first British astronaut and the first woman to visit the Mir space station.

Peter’s pictured, called Binary Star, was chosen as the overall winner of the ‘eight and over’ category. Helen presented him with his award at a ceremony in London.

Peter said: “I was really surprised and pleased when I was invited down to London for the ceremony. It was epic.

“It was amazing to meet Helen Sharman and hear her inspiring story about going into space and working on the space station.”

Helen Sharman said: “I loved Spirograph when I was young and with this year’s theme I was delighted to be involved.

“We had lots of entries and it’s really good to see how the children interpreted the space and night sky theme, we chose Peter’s Binary star because this is an accurate depiction of parts of space that has been made into a beautiful artwork and is a creative use of Spirograph to show a binary start system while the variety of patterns show defend galaxies and nebulae. Well done Peter.”

Helen became the first British Astronaut when, in May 1991, she launched on a Russian Soyuz spacecraft and spent eight days orbiting the Earth, living and working on the MIR Space Station.

She gives speeches about Space, STEM and the wonders of science.

She describes the meticulous training and preparation, learning Russian, launch and landing, how weightlessness feels, her science experiments, the team spirit, and readjusting to life on Earth.