Countdown to Innovation Lab: Art, Design and Biodiversity by Tina Woods

On the 25th and 26th of June, ColliderSCIENCE’s Future Forum group and Ignite Futures will hold an innovation lab centred on creative solutions to biodiversity, bringing creativity and science together for young people to give them the skills and confidence to be inventors and change agents in a rapidly changing world.

The lab will bring together six shortlisted teams from Ignite’s UK ArtScience Prize Ravensbourne programme, two top teams from the UK ArtScience Prize Derby cohort, and a group of 36 year-9 students from the Future Forum group comprising students from Kings College Wimbledon School and Ricard’s Lodge High School, Merton.

Students from the UK ArtScience Prize will be taking further their ideas from the earlier stages of the programme: experimenting with prototypes, materials, and making their projects a reality. In a parallel track, students from the Future Forum group will put their creativity, collaboration and curiosity skills to the test over an intensive design process that will look at how biomimetics can inspire innovative art and design ideas in under 48 hours.

Across the course of the lab, graduate designers and scientists will mentor the student teams. Guest speakers from across the disciplines, including artist Phil Coy, will also join to inspire project development. At the end of the two days the student teams will present their projects to a panel of judges, involving art curatorial organisation Invisible Dust, and innovation hub Ogilvy Labs, both of whom are offering unique work experience opportunities over the summer to selected teams.

We’ll be celebrating the achievements of all of the students involved in the UK ArtScience Prize this year along with those participating in the innovation lab, on the evening of the 26th of June. The eventbrite link for the event is here. Please join us for an exhibition of their ideas, a presentation of the prizes, and a drink or two!

We’re very honoured that the Biodiversity Innovation Lab is supported by an UnLtd SPARK award funded by Santander. UnLtd is the leading provider of support to social entrepreneurs in the UK and offers the largest such network in the world. You can find out more about UnLtd on Twitter @Untld #SparkSomeGood

 

Winners of UnLtd SPARK award by Tina Woods

Collider Science is really pleased to be awarded the SPARK award from Unltd!  Unltd is the largest network of its kind supporting social entrepreneurs in the UK. We look forward to helping all our partners and students spread the word about igniting a passion for science and coming up with ingenious idea for the future at the Biodiversity Innovation Lab in June!

Looking forward to June 2015 by Tina Woods

Future Forum, the UK ArtScience Prize, Ignite! and Ravensbourne will be joining forces to bring together teenagers from around London with their ideas in an innovation workshop (or hack-a-thon for us digital geeks) on biodiversity on 25th and 26th June 2015.  Ravensbourne students who are at the final stages of the ArtScience Prize process will work alongside a group of students aged 13-15 from a range of schools, including Kings College School Wimbledon.  

The event will give students the opportunity to develop their ideas and translate them into real solutions within an intensive, collaborative and creative environment. A great place for students to spend time with cutting edge thinkers and doers across the sciences, arts and design to solve 21st century challenges together!

 We will report back!