After 4 year's thinking, planning, talking and a bit of doing, it was time for the first regional STEAM Co. launch event.. 

We're finally ready to inspire, to power, to connect a community to walk the talk, to inspire their children with creativity by telling them all about what we've been doing at STEAM Co. for 4 years now and giving them all they need to take and run their own STEAM Co. Days.

And we chose Liverpool, or did Liverpool choose us? We certainly weren't arguing about it.

Here's a short film we made of the weekend.

Be sure to watch the trailer above to get a feel for what we're all about and see our awesome Augmented Reality video enabled posters and flyers in action.

A WEEKEND LIKE NO OTHER

We held  2 day weekend event to launch STEAM Co. in Liverpool:

• Day 1 (Fri 24th) : we offered a selection of local schools a taster of a STEAM Co. Day and an exclusive talk by the global educational guru Prof Guy Claxton with the help of a few others.
• Day 2 (Sat 25th) : a day of short talks to inspire parents and teachers to go away and run their own STEAM Co. Days. We were delighted that Sir Ken Robinson did an exclusive Q&A for us from LA.

Films of the event and all the talks will be posted here in the next week or so.

A TEAM EFFORT

We were delighted to work with Liverpool's creative, civic and business community on this:

WHY LIVERPOOL?

LIverpool is home of many of the world's famous creatives and artists (people who did things that might connect people), people who used their creativity to start whole industries or to issue wake up calls to the world.

Indeed one particularly famous Liverpudlian, Sir Ken Robinson said that "creativity is as important as literacy" in a TED talk that has been seen by 28m people around the world and which went on to inspire us to start STEAM Co.

His new book 'Creative Schools' is dynamite and we were delighted when he generously offered to do a talk for us, which you can see here.

But, the first STEAM Co. regional launch weekend is about walking the talk, both celebrating an area's creative talent and connecting it with parents, teachers, businesses and schools - to power children's futures with creative skills, lives and attitudes to prepare them for a world that is constantly changing.

THE VENUE

And were offered the use of an epic venue, home of two of the UK's most amazing schools within the Northern Schools Trust, led by 'industrialist turned educator' Nigel Ward. 

The Contemporary Urban Centre (CUC) is a former arts centre that was converted to support Liverpool's year as cultural capital, from an old Tate and Lyle sugar warehouse in the old docks, now the thriving 'Baltic Triangle' creative quarter.

It's now home to two of the trust's schools: Liverpool Life Sciences UTC and The Studio, both power houses for developing STEAM skills in the opportunities they now offer the local 14-19 year olds who study there and are going on to great things (on our last visit a group of soon to be leavers had been invited to Balliol College Oxford). 

See this blog post for more info on the schools and the inspiring story/people behind them.

Education or creativity? Or both?

A few people asked us whether we are focussed on education or creativity. And the answer is both as we can't see how you separate them at such a crucial time as primary school.

Given that Sir Ken Robinson's No 1 TED talk on how schools can teach creativity out of children inspired us to start STEAM Co. it's clear we feel that the education system in the UK if not the world needs to embrace the skills our children need and to focus on creativity in all its forms. 

Call it serendipity or luck, but we were delighted to find that both Sir Ken Robinson and Prof Guy Claxton were launching new books about how they feel education needs to change, even more so when they agreed to help us out at this event.

FRI 24th : STEAM Co. DAY FOR LOCAL SCHOOLS and GUY CLAXTON TALK

To show local parents, schools, creatives and businesses what a STEAM Co. Day looks and feels like we ran one. Well, the staff, pupils and local community of Liverpool ran one, in the CUC, with a little help from us.

SAT 25th : STEAM Co. KICK OFF - Day of talks INC SIR KEN ROBINSON

The Saturday was a day of inspiring short talks by world-class global and local speakers, thinkers and doers, teachers, parent and creatives on creativity, education and community.

We had four, twenty minute key note talks and twenty or so, rapid fire 6 minute talks. A real roller coaster that might just be a day of your life.

And don't worry. If you couldn't get along, we filmed it all to go on our YouTube channel.

To get a feel for what you can expect, have a look at the bottom of this page at the short film of Kidcrafters, a similar event that the same team ran last year for parents.

Sir Ken Robinson keynote

We're over the moon to be able to announce Sir Ken Robinson's support for the event. He connected with us from LA for a Q&A around his times in the city, his thoughts on creativity, education and parenting and an overview of his new book 'Creative Schools' - which frankly is dynamite.

THE speaker line-up

We were inundated by speaker offers from a range of artists, gurus, teachers and parents alike.

These were presented as 20 minute keynotes or 20x20 talks (where the speaker has 20 slides each of which are on screen for just 20 seconds so it was pacy with no chance of 'Death by PowerPoint).

Here's the line up, films of all the talks will follow. Watch this space: