some of you might recognize this guy Ken
Robinson he gave one of the most watched
TED talks of all time about how
creativity kills education so we don’t
grow into creativity we grow out of it
or were educated out of it and this is a
problem and because creativity is not
just about finger painting and art and
all that stuff which is fantastic it’s
also bad and being wrong being able to
be wrong and being able to come up with
original thoughts and innovate as a
society as a world this guy gave another
really good TED talk which you might not
have seen about some of the problems
with TED talks and he said have you ever
wondered why so little of the bright
future promise in TED talks actually
happened and he contrasted this simple
inspiration of a TED talk with the messy
reality of actually trying to change
something and we’ve seen some of that
tonight and the latter bit it’s not the
first bit and this is the story of a
couple of people who saw Ken Robinson’s
talk and we’re like could we make this
actually happen so the four people in
the kind of middle layer there are
designers which I’m one of them and the
two others are educators and we said
what how could we design the education
of the 21st century how can we prepare
kids for the future so what we did first
was we went out and spoke to loads of
people kids parents teachers and
thinkers in education and got lots of
different viewpoints on where the issues
are coming up we even did some
observations and some schools we went to
parents conferences all over the place
we found that again and again we heard
about this downward spiral of confidence
so first you’re disengaged in school
maybe in a particular subjects even then
you’re more generally disengaged I’m not
good at physics I’m not good at maths
and eventually it starts affecting your
self confidence in your self efficacy in
all kinds of areas if you don’t catch it
early secondly the world is changing so
we can Google everything now it’s a it’s
a different ball game to what it used to
be and new jobs are being invented every
year so 65% of children in school today
will work in jobs that haven’t been
invented yet so how can we prepare them
for a future that we can’t even see and
finally the world is facing lots of
complex and messy challenges that we
can’t solve so how do we prepare the
next generation to do that so we owe and
also finally finally and
schools are under a lot of pressure so
we did a lot of this research in the UK
and but this is also true and lots of
places that targets and numeracy
literacy is taking priority and
creativity is getting squeezed out as
are some children who may not benefit
from the mainstream type of education
practices so we came up with a
hypothesis on 21st century education we
said is it something that could be
collaborative creative and Pathak child
centered and open-ended and being
designers we quickly moved from a
hypothesis to a prototype and we use the
simple online animation tool to design
our ideal school of the future so with
personalized reports following from kids
passions immersive learning and
workshops and then we took this and
turned it into real life so this is a
housing trust in South London where we
went and we gave the kids an exercise so
this is something we do to train
designers and it’s something where you
can actually step into the shoes of
someone else so by restricting your
emotion on your site you can simulate
what it’s like to be an older person and
then you can see how difficult it is to
do everyday things like making
sandwiches and how the packaging design
affects that and the kids were really
able to engage with this as well as any
you know an adult designer and so we
played on and did a a full week camp in
2014 in London so the theme of the camp
was London 2050 and kids designed the
city of the future so experts came in in
three areas and brief them on the
clothing challenges and the challenges
and habitats and the challenges and
transport and and invited the kids to
design solutions to these challenges
which they did so solutions like an
amphibious car that can go through the
River Thames during rush hour to avoid
the traffic and like a floating house
that’s powered by poo so you don’t need
any energy and like a hot that can turn
really quickly into a cape because in
the future as they learn from the
experts there will be really quick
weather changes and you might suddenly
have a really sunny day and you’re
chilling out in your heart and then you
need to cover up from a quick rain
shower so at the end of the week the
experts came back in and the parents
came in the kids showed off their work
and this was all fantastic
and everything went really well and we
were really happy and really exhausted
because we kind of done it all ourselves
and run on adrenaline and we were burnt
out but we played on so we came up with
our second hypothesis and we said that
was great and the kids really benefited
we felt we got really good feedback from
the parents but we got kids from all
over London and when it was over they
just went back to their schools and we
had some fear that maybe that some of
the learning dissipated and we wonder
what would happen with all the great
ideas that they come up with could we
actually take real-world challenges and
base something in a community where a
year on year it could evolve so at the
time I was living in a place called
Peckham and South London you might know
it from Only Fools and Horses or other
places and but it’s a really interesting
place lots of community lots of
community activities but also lots of
social challenges so we wanted to embed
ourselves there we set up a little
pop-up shop on the high street and we
got ourselves a group of young people
slightly older this time and we set up
basically like a little PR agency
locally just for really local businesses
on the street and different community
groups to come down brief the kids on
challenges they had and see what they
could come up with so I’m just going to
talk about one of those which is trade
so trades are really interesting
organisation in the UK and they
basically fix clothes sell the clothes
and then they use the money to help
garment workers around the world they
have really interesting window display
aesthetic it’s kind of like a
high-fashion look you can see some of
the mannequins in the window and that’s
one of their trademark things and they
basically came to Peckham they did quite
well among people like me who’d moved to
Peckham young professionals whatever the
people who were kind of ruining the area
but they didn’t do too well with the
local young people who actually lived
there they didn’t go into the shop and
they wanted to know why so they came to
our young people asked them and the
young people were like well a vintage
clothes people are a bit iffy I don’t
know if I want to be wearing old clothes
but be the main thing is that those
mannequins look really stupid and none
of us want to look like that so why did
you put that in the window because
that’s not what we’re aspiring to so
trade said wow you know we’ve never
actually heard this from any of
agencies that we get for our marketing
and advertising and so they invited the
kids to take over the shop which they
did they had an event called how would
you rock it which is celebrating the
individuality that can come from vintage
clothes and remade clothes and they
actually got to dress the mannequins and
styles that they found appealing and
screen printed some t-shirts and it was
a great success and they raised loads of
money and that was our great and then
and nothing happened after that for a
while because we had reached a point at
that stage where we were all quite we’d
used up our reserves it took a lot of
energy out of us again and just life
took over like from the original group
of people that were working on this Edie
went to Hong Kong to design funeral
homes and Holly went to be a lecture in
California and mo I had a baby and I
kind of sold out and worked with some
corporate places and did some public
service stuff so all the things were
happening and it kind of seemed like
after all of that the adventure kind of
come to an end and maybe it was like you
know it was nice to see if we could
imagine this 21st century education but
ultimately too much for us to take on
and then this happened so this is across
the road here right beside us at the am
in the library of Tala and this is our
new team that’s been established you
might recognize Jerry there from one of
the previous TED Talks and we started
getting involved with Pfister oh and I
also need to give a shout out to the
lady second from the left here who’s a
senior lecturer in IT Sallah also
happens to be my mom son she’s over
there so I’d like a quick round of
applause for her because
so asides from being an inspiration to
me from a young age and being a woman in
engineering and running initiatives to
get more women into engineering she
actually kind of masterminded this by
seeing an opportunity for IT tyler’s
outreach to grow and also to use some of
the Design Thinking methods that we’d
come up with so she showed our video to
Gerry Gerry got involved and we started
thinking of this fistrook thing which he
talked a lot about earlier and which was
really cool and then we started some of
the original team were there we gathered
some more people
Barbara’s here from the library who also
helped us out so quick random
philosopher Barbara also I’m the library
and Noricum Pro again and and what this
represented was a new hypothesis for us
so the partnerships we developed in
Peckham were good but we needed to be in
deeper so we needed relationships with
organizations like IT tala like the
library here like fro again who’ve been
working in the area for a long time and
also bringing stem in is a really it was
a really good move for us because from
design design can take you so far but
once you get in engineering and other
capabilities and that’s where you can
really take the ideas quite far so and
some other things so this is neil from
Transdev lewis who came on board as kind
of a corporate partner started out as
one of our experts briefing the kids on
transport and I was actually agreed to
fund some of our camps and also the
Science Foundation of Ireland – Gerry
spoke about earlier we were critical and
yeah the kids are still solving these
challenges and this is now happening
within you know hundred metres of us
tonight and I think they can do this
stuff like it every time I wash them
dude I’m like why aren’t we allowing
them to do this week in week out in
school if kids can solve problems like
over crowding like pollution and they
should be able to do that and they’re
still coming up with great ideas so this
is Harry from Tyler as well invented
this house which floats away in case of
floods and and Laura behind him also
designed a collapsible wheelchair which
is for her granddad’s have better
mobility when he’s moving around so
really cool stuff so what’s the point
why am I telling you all this
well I’m looking back on it I can see
how our hypothesis says evolved and
hopefully I’ve told you a story tonight
that makes some kind of
but it didn’t feel like that at the time
it didn’t feel like it was making sense
and it felt like a lot of kind of false
starts and mistakes that we were making
these are the first two slides we show
the kids when they come in at the start
of the week so we say what are some of
the problems that are facing the world
and they can always tell us and then we
say and who should solve these and it
takes them a little while but ultimately
they realize it’s them it’s Austin Dove
everybody who’s going to have to solve
them and and the only way we can do that
is by diving in and something we call
fearless learning so failing failing
failing again and keep going so the
challenge I’ve got for you guys tonight
is you know we saw that TED talk Ken
Robinson we went out and we thought what
can we do about it and we kind of tried
a lot of different things some things
went well some things didn’t go well and
I would like to set the challenge for
everybody here tonight to do the same
and if you’re ever feel like you’re
flailing a bit while you’re doing that
just remember that there’s no such thing
as flying
there’s only Toy Story and falling with
style so thank you everyone
[Applause]
Robinson he gave one of the most watched
TED talks of all time about how
creativity kills education so we don’t
grow into creativity we grow out of it
or were educated out of it and this is a
problem and because creativity is not
just about finger painting and art and
all that stuff which is fantastic it’s
also bad and being wrong being able to
be wrong and being able to come up with
original thoughts and innovate as a
society as a world this guy gave another
really good TED talk which you might not
have seen about some of the problems
with TED talks and he said have you ever
wondered why so little of the bright
future promise in TED talks actually
happened and he contrasted this simple
inspiration of a TED talk with the messy
reality of actually trying to change
something and we’ve seen some of that
tonight and the latter bit it’s not the
first bit and this is the story of a
couple of people who saw Ken Robinson’s
talk and we’re like could we make this
actually happen so the four people in
the kind of middle layer there are
designers which I’m one of them and the
two others are educators and we said
what how could we design the education
of the 21st century how can we prepare
kids for the future so what we did first
was we went out and spoke to loads of
people kids parents teachers and
thinkers in education and got lots of
different viewpoints on where the issues
are coming up we even did some
observations and some schools we went to
parents conferences all over the place
we found that again and again we heard
about this downward spiral of confidence
so first you’re disengaged in school
maybe in a particular subjects even then
you’re more generally disengaged I’m not
good at physics I’m not good at maths
and eventually it starts affecting your
self confidence in your self efficacy in
all kinds of areas if you don’t catch it
early secondly the world is changing so
we can Google everything now it’s a it’s
a different ball game to what it used to
be and new jobs are being invented every
year so 65% of children in school today
will work in jobs that haven’t been
invented yet so how can we prepare them
for a future that we can’t even see and
finally the world is facing lots of
complex and messy challenges that we
can’t solve so how do we prepare the
next generation to do that so we owe and
also finally finally and
schools are under a lot of pressure so
we did a lot of this research in the UK
and but this is also true and lots of
places that targets and numeracy
literacy is taking priority and
creativity is getting squeezed out as
are some children who may not benefit
from the mainstream type of education
practices so we came up with a
hypothesis on 21st century education we
said is it something that could be
collaborative creative and Pathak child
centered and open-ended and being
designers we quickly moved from a
hypothesis to a prototype and we use the
simple online animation tool to design
our ideal school of the future so with
personalized reports following from kids
passions immersive learning and
workshops and then we took this and
turned it into real life so this is a
housing trust in South London where we
went and we gave the kids an exercise so
this is something we do to train
designers and it’s something where you
can actually step into the shoes of
someone else so by restricting your
emotion on your site you can simulate
what it’s like to be an older person and
then you can see how difficult it is to
do everyday things like making
sandwiches and how the packaging design
affects that and the kids were really
able to engage with this as well as any
you know an adult designer and so we
played on and did a a full week camp in
2014 in London so the theme of the camp
was London 2050 and kids designed the
city of the future so experts came in in
three areas and brief them on the
clothing challenges and the challenges
and habitats and the challenges and
transport and and invited the kids to
design solutions to these challenges
which they did so solutions like an
amphibious car that can go through the
River Thames during rush hour to avoid
the traffic and like a floating house
that’s powered by poo so you don’t need
any energy and like a hot that can turn
really quickly into a cape because in
the future as they learn from the
experts there will be really quick
weather changes and you might suddenly
have a really sunny day and you’re
chilling out in your heart and then you
need to cover up from a quick rain
shower so at the end of the week the
experts came back in and the parents
came in the kids showed off their work
and this was all fantastic
and everything went really well and we
were really happy and really exhausted
because we kind of done it all ourselves
and run on adrenaline and we were burnt
out but we played on so we came up with
our second hypothesis and we said that
was great and the kids really benefited
we felt we got really good feedback from
the parents but we got kids from all
over London and when it was over they
just went back to their schools and we
had some fear that maybe that some of
the learning dissipated and we wonder
what would happen with all the great
ideas that they come up with could we
actually take real-world challenges and
base something in a community where a
year on year it could evolve so at the
time I was living in a place called
Peckham and South London you might know
it from Only Fools and Horses or other
places and but it’s a really interesting
place lots of community lots of
community activities but also lots of
social challenges so we wanted to embed
ourselves there we set up a little
pop-up shop on the high street and we
got ourselves a group of young people
slightly older this time and we set up
basically like a little PR agency
locally just for really local businesses
on the street and different community
groups to come down brief the kids on
challenges they had and see what they
could come up with so I’m just going to
talk about one of those which is trade
so trades are really interesting
organisation in the UK and they
basically fix clothes sell the clothes
and then they use the money to help
garment workers around the world they
have really interesting window display
aesthetic it’s kind of like a
high-fashion look you can see some of
the mannequins in the window and that’s
one of their trademark things and they
basically came to Peckham they did quite
well among people like me who’d moved to
Peckham young professionals whatever the
people who were kind of ruining the area
but they didn’t do too well with the
local young people who actually lived
there they didn’t go into the shop and
they wanted to know why so they came to
our young people asked them and the
young people were like well a vintage
clothes people are a bit iffy I don’t
know if I want to be wearing old clothes
but be the main thing is that those
mannequins look really stupid and none
of us want to look like that so why did
you put that in the window because
that’s not what we’re aspiring to so
trade said wow you know we’ve never
actually heard this from any of
agencies that we get for our marketing
and advertising and so they invited the
kids to take over the shop which they
did they had an event called how would
you rock it which is celebrating the
individuality that can come from vintage
clothes and remade clothes and they
actually got to dress the mannequins and
styles that they found appealing and
screen printed some t-shirts and it was
a great success and they raised loads of
money and that was our great and then
and nothing happened after that for a
while because we had reached a point at
that stage where we were all quite we’d
used up our reserves it took a lot of
energy out of us again and just life
took over like from the original group
of people that were working on this Edie
went to Hong Kong to design funeral
homes and Holly went to be a lecture in
California and mo I had a baby and I
kind of sold out and worked with some
corporate places and did some public
service stuff so all the things were
happening and it kind of seemed like
after all of that the adventure kind of
come to an end and maybe it was like you
know it was nice to see if we could
imagine this 21st century education but
ultimately too much for us to take on
and then this happened so this is across
the road here right beside us at the am
in the library of Tala and this is our
new team that’s been established you
might recognize Jerry there from one of
the previous TED Talks and we started
getting involved with Pfister oh and I
also need to give a shout out to the
lady second from the left here who’s a
senior lecturer in IT Sallah also
happens to be my mom son she’s over
there so I’d like a quick round of
applause for her because
so asides from being an inspiration to
me from a young age and being a woman in
engineering and running initiatives to
get more women into engineering she
actually kind of masterminded this by
seeing an opportunity for IT tyler’s
outreach to grow and also to use some of
the Design Thinking methods that we’d
come up with so she showed our video to
Gerry Gerry got involved and we started
thinking of this fistrook thing which he
talked a lot about earlier and which was
really cool and then we started some of
the original team were there we gathered
some more people
Barbara’s here from the library who also
helped us out so quick random
philosopher Barbara also I’m the library
and Noricum Pro again and and what this
represented was a new hypothesis for us
so the partnerships we developed in
Peckham were good but we needed to be in
deeper so we needed relationships with
organizations like IT tala like the
library here like fro again who’ve been
working in the area for a long time and
also bringing stem in is a really it was
a really good move for us because from
design design can take you so far but
once you get in engineering and other
capabilities and that’s where you can
really take the ideas quite far so and
some other things so this is neil from
Transdev lewis who came on board as kind
of a corporate partner started out as
one of our experts briefing the kids on
transport and I was actually agreed to
fund some of our camps and also the
Science Foundation of Ireland – Gerry
spoke about earlier we were critical and
yeah the kids are still solving these
challenges and this is now happening
within you know hundred metres of us
tonight and I think they can do this
stuff like it every time I wash them
dude I’m like why aren’t we allowing
them to do this week in week out in
school if kids can solve problems like
over crowding like pollution and they
should be able to do that and they’re
still coming up with great ideas so this
is Harry from Tyler as well invented
this house which floats away in case of
floods and and Laura behind him also
designed a collapsible wheelchair which
is for her granddad’s have better
mobility when he’s moving around so
really cool stuff so what’s the point
why am I telling you all this
well I’m looking back on it I can see
how our hypothesis says evolved and
hopefully I’ve told you a story tonight
that makes some kind of
but it didn’t feel like that at the time
it didn’t feel like it was making sense
and it felt like a lot of kind of false
starts and mistakes that we were making
these are the first two slides we show
the kids when they come in at the start
of the week so we say what are some of
the problems that are facing the world
and they can always tell us and then we
say and who should solve these and it
takes them a little while but ultimately
they realize it’s them it’s Austin Dove
everybody who’s going to have to solve
them and and the only way we can do that
is by diving in and something we call
fearless learning so failing failing
failing again and keep going so the
challenge I’ve got for you guys tonight
is you know we saw that TED talk Ken
Robinson we went out and we thought what
can we do about it and we kind of tried
a lot of different things some things
went well some things didn’t go well and
I would like to set the challenge for
everybody here tonight to do the same
and if you’re ever feel like you’re
flailing a bit while you’re doing that
just remember that there’s no such thing
as flying
there’s only Toy Story and falling with
style so thank you everyone
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: