About Ignite!

Ignite! was set up in October 2006 to promote creativity in learning.
Ignite! works with young people to reveal, develop and exercise their capacity for creativity and creative thinking.
Ignite! believes that the characteristics of creative thinkers can be identified and nurtured, and that young people’s innate capacity for invention and play, their curiosity and appetite for new learning experiences, and their delight in seeing and making connections should be developed both within schools and elsewhere.
Why is this important?
The majority of young people now entering the education system will eventually take up jobs that haven’t been invented yet; and most of them will change jobs between 12 and 20 times in their working lives. For them to achieve their full potential in this rapidly changing environment, young people require new skills and attributes – resourcefulness, the ability to make connections, intuition, reflection and a preparedness to take risk.
We refer to these attributes as the characteristics of creativity:
  1. Resilience – the capacity to tolerate confusion and ambiguity and to learn through trial and error;
  2. Resourcefulness – knowing what to do when you don’t know what to do, and having different thinking strategies;
  3. Reflection – being able to observe and document your own thinking;
  4. Relationships – the capacities to see and make connections, and develop more than one meaning or possibility;
  5. Risk-taking - the appetite for challenge, developing an eclectic curiosity and exploring new unfamiliar territory

All our projects and all our partnerships aim to translate this theory into practice that is innovative and sustainable. This in summary, is our unique approach and mission.

Water rockets on a summer residential.
By revealing, encouraging and supporting the creative capacities of young people and giving them confidence to trust their innate creative thinking abilities, Ignite! proposes a radical re-think of the purpose and form of education and learning. We will continue to work directly with young people in structures and models of action research to test ways of identifying and supporting the creative characteristics of resilience, resourcefulness, reflection, and the capacities to make connections and take risks.

Visit our website at http://www.ignitefutures.org.uk/