St Mary’s students wow judges at the 2025 Big Ideas Challenge

POSTED June 10 2025 , Boarding, News, Parents & Community, Senior School, Sports

Eighteen enthusiastic students from Years 7 to 10 represented our School at this year’s Big Ideas Challenge. Held at Curtin University, the event brought together more than 160 students from across Perth for a day of inspiring workshops to promote innovative thinking. The day culminated in teams of students pitching solutions to a complex, local issue in a ‘Shark Tank ‘-style forum.

Run by Future Anything in collaboration with Cancer Network WA, this year’s challenge asked students to tackle the critical issue of sun safety:

“As an enterprising leader, pitch a project that will increase sun safe behaviours or create sun safe environments.”

Students formed 40 mixed-school teams, each collaborating on a unique pitch to present before a panel of industry judges.

Five St Mary’s students, including Year 9 students Rose and Veya, made up the teams selected as finalists. The overall winning team of the 2025 Big Ideas Challenge included Year 10 students Chelsea, Charice and Elena.

Their pitch: Sun Smart Cards. A government-backed initiative to provide sun safety supplies across WA.

Their idea was lauded for its clarity, innovation and professionalism. Judges praised all St Mary’s students for their confidence, creativity, and collaborative spirit. Feedback from industry mentors and facilitators was overwhelmingly positive, and representatives from Cancer Council WA and the Melanoma Institute Australia have expressed interest in following up with our students to explore next steps.

Below is a reflection from the winning team, where you can read more about their innovative idea.

The day gave us an opportunity to design and pitch solutions that improve sun safety behaviours. Throughout the day, we learnt how we could do this through a series of engaging workshops. We started with learning about the importance of sun safety and then were able to work with students from other schools. With them we created a unique idea and solution to present to the judges.

At the start of the challenge, we were quite nervous. We saw how many other people were there and were unsure what we were going to do. However, as the day progressed, we got used to the environment and slowly felt more confident. It turned out that their ideation process was similar to what we had learned through Year 9 EDI and Year 10 i3, and harnessing these skills helped us to create an effective, unique solution, which won us the competition.

The success of our students at this event is a testament to the design thinking, collaboration and pitching skills they have acquired through existing programs such as our Year 9 EDI Shell NXplorers Program and our i3 Initiative for Year 10 students.

We are incredibly proud of our students’ achievements at the 2025 Big Ideas Challenge. Their creativity, courage and care were on full display throughout the day, and we look forward to seeing where these bright ideas take them next.