'It takes a whole village (and everyone's agency) to inspire a child'

Agency: [ey-juh n-see]: noun

1. A business or organisation providing a particular service on behalf of another business, person, or group.
2. Action or intervention producing a particular effect.

Here's a short film of what happened when a bunch of people were given some time out from their digital agency in Shoreditch to pop up the road to collaborate with other carers by helping stage a 'school day like no other', a day of creativity, in a really challenged school in their community.

It’s about three years since I put my twenty plus year career in agencies across digital marketing and innovation strategy behind me to evangelise for the power of creativity and people to engage children, innovate business and connect communities after I saw Sir Ken Robinson’s No. 1 TED talk.

I decided to try to walk it, by co-founding a non-profit community enterprise called STEAM Co. and it’s been quite a roller coaster ride to say the least.

And you don’t look back on roller coasters. Or walk on them.

A year ago we held a sell-out event at the top of the Barclays tower in Canary Wharf which saw one of the most inspiring people, Poet and Chancellor of Manchester University, Lemn Sissay MBE say “Creativity is not the Monopoly of artists” and describe how it had literally help save his life.

He spoke alongside marketing gurus like Mark Earls and Robin Wight, brave, bold and creative school leaders and educationalists like Cambridge Prof Pam Burnard and Cambridge Head Teacher Rae Snape and amazingly generous world class creative talent like Martyn Ware (Human League/Heaven 17), Tom Morley (Scritti Politti) and Dominic Wilcox (Hackney).

The CEO of Barclays stood up and credited us all for "unleashing the power of art and creativity" and pledged to "leave no one behind in this, the fourth industrial revolution".

If you saw the film at the top of this blog you'll have seen how last week it paid off in full and gave me probably the most rewarding day of my life, making the journey so worthwhile.

A team of creative hipsters from Your Favourite Story, a digital agency in Shoreditch took a day off and worked alongside a group of secondary students to stage a STEAM Co. Day in what is officially one of the poorest school communities in the UK. The deprivation is unimaginable with many families so excluded from society they aren't eligible for benefits or even free school meals, let alone pupil premium grants to help close the gap.

At our Barclays event, Marva Rollins, their head teacher, said 'creativity is a luxury". She has since been awarded an OBE for her services to her school, her community and her profession.

Alongside her, Educational Consultant Action Jackson talked about how children get addicted to creative heroes: “When greatness walks into the room, it doesn’t have to announce itself. The very essence of greatness is caught by our young people. That’s why they’re addicted to artists.”

In ‘Little Inventors’, an activity run by the secondary students, the primary children were briefed to come up with zany inventions after watching a briefing film by Artist, Inventor and STEAM Co. Inspirator Dominic Wilcox. They'll be uploaded to his website for a critique and some may even get prototyped.

We first met Dominic at a STEAM Co. Day we ran at the top of the BT Tower 3 years ago and he spoke at our Liverpool launch after which we collaborated on the Inventors STEAM Co. event in his home city of Sunderland last year.

Dominic's Little Inventors project has been endorsed by the United Nations and he has taken it far and wide including Beijing and Shanghai recently and has just also featured in a BBC TV documentary on Inventors.

Here's a blog about the day at Raynham Primary if you want to read more about the detail.

A year or so ago I blogged on a book that Seth Godin self-published called Your Turn. He liked it so much he sent me two boxes of the book, which is about the connection economy and getting off the broken escalator to do meaningful work. 

In the film below he defines Art, as “what we call it when what we do might connect us”

I hope you enjoy these films and hope it makes sense of all the asks, and share requests and blags over the year. Whether you acted or ignored, thank you for noticing.

But this is just the beginning.

Just seeing that little girl at the end of this film makes it all worthwhile for me. And hopefully you.

Is it Your Turn? 

Get in touch to find out how to help run a STEAM Co. Day in your community near your work and/or at home.

And if, like me, you ever find yourself on the creative roller coaster may this film of a talk I gave about a blog I found by Tim Ferris shared by Ben Southworth, help you like it helped me, but sadly not one of my best mates.

This is for you Hugh.