Build the Change
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What is Build the Change?
Build the Change is all about giving children a voice and allowing them to express their hopes and ideas for a better future.
Children use their creativity to solve real-world challenges with LEGO® bricks and other creative materials – and it is all achieved via learning through play.
We are on a mission to make children heard and use their ideas and visions to inspire real meaningful change.
Free learning through play materials
Download our free resource packs to help adult facilitators run Build the Change workshops with children, with videos, presentations, speakers' notes, and printables.
The materials are designed to inspire children to get hands-on tackling a range of real-world social and environmental challenges; from protecting animals from climate change to designing places for people.
Stories
Reimagine cities this World Play Day and beyond
As part of our 2025 World Play Day adventures, we're inviting children to imagine, build and even inspire the playful cities of tomorrow! Our new challenge, in partnership with design experts Arup, will see children's ideas shared with decision makers and city planners.
See how you can get involved here.
Build the Change with Pharrell Williams
Ignite children’s creativity and celebrate individuality in this LEGO® Build the Change challenge with Pharrell Williams and his non-profit YELLOW.
Discover more here.
Build the Change at Natural History Museum
Check out how children joined our collaborative LEGO® Build the Change workshops as part of our partnership at the Natural History Museum in London, building and sharing their creative ideas for how to protect today’s dinosaurs: birds.
Check out the short video here.
Children share ideas with Sustainability Pros
Our awesome partner, The Day, took Build the Change to the UK's Futurebuild event, a platform for experts from the built environment industry to share innovations for a more sustainable built future. What better place for our competition-winning young people to share their ideas on how they can make a difference through design.
Check out the awesome video here.
Build the Change celebrated World Environment Day
In celebration of the 52nd World Environment Day, we invited over 400 children to the Build the Change Event at the Guangzhou Children's Activity Center. The children got the opportunity to explore their understanding of "sustainability" and share their ideas on creating a community without waste. See the video to find out more.
Build the Change goes to COP26
Build the Change urged world leaders at COP26 in Glasgow to take note of children’s views on tackling climate change, and the voices of over 6,000 children resulted in the Building Instruction for a Better World booklet.
Check out this video.
The school garden make-over
Our friends at EarthWatch facilitated a Build the Change workshop and brought the students' ideas to reality in their school garden. If you’d like to hear more about EarthWatch, contact the Education team at [email protected]
Check out the amazing video here.
Stop-motion film competition
More than 35,000 children got involved in a UK school competition with renowned film-maker Reggie Yates, who challenged them to create a short film highlighting an issue in their local community and ways to solve it. Congratulations to St. Hild’s College CE in Durham, UK.
See the winning film here.
New factory in the U.S.
We wanted local children to be part of the journey when we planned our new carbon-neutral run factory in Richmond, Virginia. To make that happen, we invited 250 children from the local community to inspire us with their ideas on how to get plants, insects and animals to thrive around the new factory. Check out the video here.
Fly Away Isles Playground
The ‘Fly Away Isles’ playground was built in Harlem, New York City, in celebration of the LEGO Group’s 90th anniversary. We used our Build the Change program to source ideas from children in the local community that were then used as inspiration by renowned artist Hebru Brantley in his design of a playground. It received a Drum award in 2022.
Check out this video for the full story.
New factory in Vietnam
Children from the local Hoi Nghia Primary School participated in a ‘Build the Change’ workshop where they used LEGO® bricks to create ideas for the factory’s employee and play spaces. Their ideas ranged from gardens filled with local plants to fun playgrounds made up of a rollercoaster, aquarium and soccer stadium.
Gallery of ideas
Check out the amazing gallery of children’s ideas below and upload your own that helps solve a real-world issue.
This eco-friendly cabin has several environmentally sustainable features. It has solar panels on the roof, water mill for energy, a rooftop garden, rain barrel, butterfly garden and apple tree.
Meet the robot that runs on garbage. The dog with the jetpack flies and collects garbage and puts it in the robot's garbage bin. The garbage collected goes through the green-gun that reuses objects.
It can protect itself from climate change with a sun-reflective skin and coat. It can also move quickly from place to place to find others of its kind.