PUPILS are using their creativity to design the shoes and trainers of the future.

Twenty youngsters at Ryton Comprehensive School, in Gateshead, are entering the Funky Footwear 2008 competition, the Giant Minds challenge, run by not-for-profit company Think Differently.

The challenge, involving 65 schools in the North-East and the South-East, aims to get youngsters to think creatively to design the footwear of the future.

Brian Edwards, group director of learning and culture with Gateshead Borough Council, said: "Gateshead has a growing reputation for creativity, partly because of our major cultural developments like the Baltic and the Angel of the North, but also because we appreciate its important to individual and regional development.

"In fact, it underpins our bid for Capital of Culture 2008 status. We love the theme of Funky Footwear for 2008. Its fun, its easy to understand and it shows the importance of young people in our bid for Capital of Culture status.

"It is essential that schools help to unlock students' creativity and teach them how to think for themselves."

The Ryton pupils are awaiting the verdict of the judges, from commerce and business, on their designs