LATEST LIVE STREAM
We’ll be live streaming a few events over the coming months and will put the latest feed here where you’ll be able to add comments we’ll put on screen.
But it’s not all text box chat… at some of the events we’ll have a live studio audience in a Zoom room that you will be able to join and use to come on screen with us for a chat. Put a green screen on the wall behind you or a green jpg as your Zoom background and we’ll pop you behind a desk in the room!
WE’VE GOT THE POWER
Today is a big day for The RSA with Andy Haldane, former Chief Economist at The Bank of England, being sworn in as CEO in a global online Town Hall event tonight after which we are going to host a Zoom reception to launch a #PowerToCreate21 initiative to test fellowship appetite for a year of creativity in 2022.
Ten years ago I started a project in my sons’ primary that qualified me for RSA Fellowship.
Five years ago I gave my career up to roll it out across the UK
Today I reach out to RSA Fellows to be part of it, with their art
For, as Seth Godin says here Art is…
The RSA and me
The Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce, an organisation founded by the once Liberal Elite in the coffee shops of London now boasts a global Fellowship of over 35,000 people committed to finding practical solutions to social challenges.
I was chuffed to be invited to become a fellow about seven years ago for my ‘services to education, having started a project - STEAM Co. - in my sons’ primary school that was aligned with a lot of the work The RSA was doing.
STEAM Co. - Inspiring all our kids to aim higher than high, powered by Creativity and Community
MY INSPIRATION
As well as a weekend at a family friendly Camp Bestival and from reading half a book called ’What’s the Point of School’, I’d been inspired in no small way by Sir Ken Robinson’s TED talk on how schools can kill creativity.
It turned out he’d done another version as part of the RSA Animates series that had been their most popular YouTube talk to date.
The flattery soon evaporated when I realised they are as keen for subscriptions as any membership organisation but undeterred I pressed on, convinced that STEAM Co.’s community engagement model would be a perfect was for Fellows to engage meaningfully and purposefully in school communities and provide a willing workforce.
I was given the chance to give a 3 minute pitch to the fellowship in the prestigious RSA House on John Adam Street in The Strand.
I’d heard that some folk see The RSA as a ‘talking shop’ and knowing our kids and communities needed more than talk when it comes to education and specifically creativity, I called on Fellows to walk the talk.
A few hands went up as you can see here.
Since then I’ve really valued my fellowship, having connected with some inspiring and action orientated, caring people but never quite cracked it.
Since then, STEAM Co. has gone from strength to strength working with a range of school communities, inspiring creative and organisations across the UK.
We’ve run regional launch events in Liverpool, Sunderland, Ironbridge and London and ran pop ups at a number of festival across the UK, and even ran our own #ArtCamp20 Festival weekend between lock-downs!
This short film sums up work to date and most recently, activity in lock down where the whole community engagement model was taken online using a green screen TV studio built with emergency Covid funding from DCMS and Arts Council England.
What’s the plan stan?
Via a series of theory of change and funding workshops I undertook with DCMS and Nesta a few years ago we developed a three phase plan for STEAM Co.
Profile - assess impact, interest, raise awareness and build network
Prove - assess viability and ability to scale via trials in three areas around the UK
Propagate - roll-out across the UK, most likely using a non-profit franchise model
Funding challenges and covid have slowed this plan a little but we’re back on track, hence this blog.
A couple of years ago I was invited to Coventry for briefing by the then culture minister, Jeremy Wright on plans for a national £120m Festival of Creativity and Innovation in 2022.
He gave us an exclusive interview in which he said he was looking for grassroots creativity projects to show the value of art.
How art connects.
We busily refocused plans to do what we could to be part of that and with the help of an Arts Council England grant ran a year of #ArtConnects19 projects across the UK as seen here.
A video call in a primary school in Liverpool with global disco dad super star Nile Rodgers inspired our #Collaborate20 year of events which were scuppered more than a little by covid and lockdown.
Our plan now is to get funding for three of our Pop-Up Creativity Day Drop Trucks and STEAMsters to run them around the UK to iron out any creases before rolling them out across the UK in 2022, ideally 22 of them.
We just launched the #MissionToMars21 Tour to inspire a million children to aim higher than high for which we received funding from Jared Isaacman, the tech billionaire dad who just led the first all civilian space mission with Elon Musk’s SpaceX which you may have seen on BBC news just last week when I live streamed to a school in Coventry from a cardboard Mars base camp.
Let’s make it happen
I was grateful to the former CEO Matthew Taylor for filming a short talk for our #ArtConnects19 festival weekend in King’s Cross and then recording our first #ArtConnects Podcast in which he said “what you are doing is absolutely brilliant Nick. I am going to make it happen for you”.
Sadly Matthew has now moved on and here we are today with a new CEO and a new opportunity.
Seven years ago this week,. Matthew launched an RSA initiative called the ‘Power to Create - in which he asked how we can empower people to be active participants in creating a world we want to live in offering a vision for the future - a world where every individual has the freedom and opportunity to develop their unique capabilities to the full.
JOIN US
Well I for one am as keen as ever to make that happen, to walk that Power to Create talk and tonight after Andy’s Town Hall call on RSA Fellows to join me to share our thoughts about his talk and what Fellowship means to them.
To share thoughts about STEAM Co. and whether there’s interest in a follow up session to help me plan and deliver events and activities within our own #Festival22.
I’m calling for Creative Carers - People and Organisations who care about Children Creativity and All Our Futures.
Join me here in a Zoom room in a virtual John Adam Street 6.45pm to 8.00pm Mon 27th Sept, BYO
