Who doesn't love a craft competition show? We love settling down with a cup of tea to watch talented people showing off what they can do. The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge is the latest addition to Channel 4's craft show lineup and it focuses on a new craft: dolls house design.
Each week, the show's ten amateur crafters will compete to be named the UK's best dolls house designer. Prepare to fall in love with the teeny tiny details that the contestants put into their work!
Over eight weeks, the contestants will transform a mini mansion into a fantasy dolls house. Each room will take inspiration from a different period of history, from the Regency period to Art Deco design.
The show is hosted by Sandi Toksvig, who brings her usual warmth and humour to the role. "I mainly agreed to the show because I didn’t think they’d find another presenter the right height. I was destined to do it," she says.
"I didn’t realise until I was asked about this show how many people are interested in the world of miniatures and it’s the range of people, too, there is an enormous number of very young people. I mentioned it to friends when we were having dinner and their 18-year-old went ‘oh miniatures are my thing’ and showed me all these houses she’d made. You can become obsessed with it really quickly."
Sandi is joined by judges Laura Jackson and Dr Willard Wigan MBE. Laura is known as an interior design expert, while Dr Willard is a world-renowned micro sculptor.
Read on to learn more about The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge 2022!
Looking for more creative TV shows to watch? Check out our guides to Interior Design Masters, The Great British Sewing Bee, The Great Pottery Throwdown and Grayson's Art Club.
What channel is The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge 2022 on?
The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge is shown on More4.
What time is the The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge 2022 on TV?
It is shown at 9pm on Sunday evenings.
Where to watch The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge?
You can watch The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge on More4 at 9pm on Sundays. You can catch up with The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge on Channel 4's streaming service too.
The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge series 1: what to expect
Prepare to be impressed by the skills of the talented miniaturists as they compete to design tiny rooms. Laura Jackson says: "I don’t think there’s been a show like this in terms of the idea. The competitors are so passionate, it was a wonderful thing to be a part of.
"It’s kind of that nice mixture of miniatures and interiors, there are some really nice nuggets for people who like design as well as miniatures, it kind of straddles those two worlds which I think will be really interesting for the viewer."
Willard says that it was very difficult to send the contestants home each week because they were so skilful. "So many emotions came out during filming," he says.
"It was so much fun, I enjoyed every minute of it, especially with Sandi and Laura, we had a great laugh. It was a great experience."
There are lots of highlights to look out for in the series. Sandi was particularly impressed by the tiny pieces of furniture which actually worked. Keep an eye out for the miniature bathtub with running water and the little mangle that actually works!
Sandi was a big fan of the Georgian kitchen challenge, which included a blancmange that looked good enough to eat.
The Great Big Tiny Design Challenge judges
This series, the show will be judged by Laura Jackson and Dr Willard Wigan MBE.
Laura Jackson is an interior designer and TV presenter who has appeared on shows such as Ready or Not on BBC One and Take Me Out: The Gossip on ITV 2.
She runs a supper club called Jackson&Levine with radio presenter and podcaster Alice Levine. They have produced a line of homewares for Habitat together.
Laura is joined by Dr Willard Wigan MBE who is a British micro sculptor. As a child, he was told he would amount to nothing and struggled with reading and writing at school.
When he was growing up, he would show his tiny creations to his mom, who would tell him that they needed to be even smaller. Before she died, she told him: "The smaller you make things the bigger your name will become."
In 2007, he was awarded an MBE by Queen Elizabeth II for his services to art. In 2013, he entered the Guinness World Record books for creating the tiniest sculpture ever made by a human hand.
Meet the Great Big Tiny Design Challenge contestants 2022
Beth Krum
Beth is a 50-year-old magistrate from Southampton. She grew up in North London and lived in France for 15 years while working as an English language teacher. She has three grown-up children and is also a step-mother to her partner's three grown up children.
Beth loves to spend her free time in her miniatures workshop in her garden.
Bexie Bush
Bexie is a 31-year-old animation director from Southport/London. She was inspired by her parents to work in a creative career. Her father is a composer and her mother was a computer game designer. She has a masters in animation direction from the National Film and Television School.
Bexie started her career in animation direction, but discovered she had a flair for miniature crafting when she had to produce a small sets for a film she was working on.
Dominic Kane
Dom is a 30-year-old mechanical engineer from West Yorkshire. He studied project design before becoming a mechanical engineer. He loves to create high quality tiny miniatures and says that the thing he likes most about crafting is the sense of community.
He has a wide range of other interests too, ranging from powerlifting to going to heavy metal gigs!
Elizabeth Joseph
Elizabeth is a 52-year-old web designer and customer services associate from London. She's always loved art and being creative. She believes that crafting can have real benefits for our mental health. She volunteers to run craft sessions for teenage girls who have been excluded from school.
Elizabeth likes to collaborate with artists to create mini versions of their work and loves going to doll's house exhibitions.
Julie Gill
Julie is a 53-year-old fish and chip shop assistant from Lancashire. She's a sociable person who previously worked as a beauty therapist in LA. She's used to working with her hands and has also been a barber and a tattoo artist in the past. Now she works in her husband's fish and chip shop.
Over the past few years, Julie has really got into making doll's houses and it's her favourite hobby. She says her family thought that she'd lost the plot when she first bought a doll's house home!
Matthew Docherty
Matthew is a 32-year-old artist and masseur from Tyne and Wear. He has a real eye for detail and has studied costume design, which involved making intricate miniatures.
He has worked as a freelance prop designer, costume designer and set dresser, but he also runs creative workshops for people who are struggling with their mental health.
Michael Robbins
Michael is a 27-year-old miniature artist from West Yorkshire. He's been obsessed with miniatures for as long as he can remember, so he naturally moved on to making his own.
He also has a degree in dance and loves anything theatrical. He is always pleased to meet fellow enthusiasts from the tiny world community.
Nadia Michaux
Nadia is 38 and lives in Norfolk. As a child growing up in South East Asia, she fell in love with Polly Pockets and other tiny toys. She previously worked in PR, but gave it up for a quieter life in the countryside with her husband and her dog.
Nadia specialises in creating spectacular miniature food, from tiny cakes to small sweets. We can't wait to see what delicious objects she makes on the show!
Sharon Harvey
Sharon is a 53-year-old computer analyst from South Wales. She loved tiny crafting from a young age and it quickly became one of her passions. She is hard of hearing, so she struggled to communicate when she was at school. As a result, she threw herself into crafting.
She rediscovered her love of miniatures during lockdown and has turned a doll's house into an upstairs-downstairs music shop and cafe bar. She has also created a miniature replica of her neighbour's potting shed.
Thomas Murray
Thomas is a 47-year-old garden centre employee from County Carlow in Ireland. He's been teaching himself how to make miniatures since 2006. His love of Jane Austen has inspired him to create miniature replicas of stately homes in incredible detail. He loves researching the history of stately homes to find ideas for his creations too.
We hope you've found this guide useful. Looking for more creative TV programmes? Take a look at our guides to All That Glitters, The Repair Shop, Britain's Best Wood Worker and Sky Portrait Artist of the Year.
