‘What are schools for? How are we preparing young people for the futurel

Whole Education Conference 2010, Monday 6th December | 10.30am – 4.45pm As a new government tackles education reform and economic uncertainty persists, the challenges for young people have never been greater. This conference brings together leading figures from education, business, academia, local government and the youth sector to explore how these groups can work together [...]

Enabling Enterprise Launches

Blog post by Tom Ravenscroft, CEO of Enabling Enterprise.Enabling Enterprise is about getting practical learning and skills development into every classroom, and our official launch event on Thursday 20th May was a chance to showcase what we are up to. Seventy guests from across business, education and public sectors gathered at UBS in the heart [...]

Sir Ken Robinson: Bring on the learning revolution!

Needs no introduction:

Reflections on Shine

Just back from SHINE, the third annual unconference for social entrepreneurs: hundreds of social entrepreneurs, investors and supporters brought together by events producers germination and partners including UnLtd and School for Social Entrepreneurs. Swiftly following an incredibly inspiring presentation from Alexander Osterwalder that drew on the design process behind the Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, my [...]

The proof is in the pudding

Faking It is the two week programme that challenges unemployed young people to fake it in a new profession. The pilot programme, in April 2009 was recorded by Young Foundation advisor Karen Freyer and Ed Owles from Native Voice Films and edited by our intern Gaia Marcus. The video is now publicly available.

Space Unlimited calls it “Uncommon Sense”

Taken from Space Unlimited’s blog, written by Heather Sim. Innovation involves uncertainty. It’s just not possible to try out something new without taking some risks along the way. Learning how to handle uncertainty and risks is therefore a crucial life skill. You might say it’s common sense. In our projects, we ask everyone to take [...]

Now we are (nearly) three

As we come up to the Learning Launchpad’s third birthday, it feels like the right time to reflect on the ups and downs of the past three years and ponder our future. Since partnering with Edge to develop the Learning Launchpad fund, we’ve achieved a whole lot. Many of our investees have secured major commitments [...]

Tales of the City: Year Up

During a trip to San Francisco, I came across a number of fantastic social enterprises that provide inspiration for the work we’re doing with young people in the UK. Most were looking at innovative and efficient ways of enabling young people to achieve their potential – some through addressing an environmental issue and others, like [...]

Goodbye Cynthia… for now.

The Learning Launchpad’s Cynthia Shanmugalingam begins a 12-week secondment to Dasra in Mumbai tomorrow. Keep up-to-date on all her news on her blog – The Mahatma Lives. She will be missed!

David Lammy launches Fastlaners

David Lammy (Minister of State for Higher Education) announced the official launch of Fastlaners. Fastlaners is an East London-based scheme that was developed by Learning Launchpad’s Zarlasht Halaimzai (now at Studio Schools) to help graduates make the transition into the world of work. It is a crash course on everything from voice training to team [...]