How can we communicate agelessness? We need to become age blind to see people as who they are rather than their age to develop a common respect. We cant be talking about ‘back in my day…’, instead we must think about today being our day, that we of 2 ages share.

The Idea:

The idea came about through thinking about how we can shift the kinds of conversations that currently happen everywhere between all ages of people and how this could be shifted in order to create ageless conversation.

Inside the kit there would be a pack of cards to help instigate conversations about subjects common to everyone or shared interests such as NHS, Play, Housing, Art, Finance and Parks. On the cards would be questions to help us carry out these new conversations. The kit could exist around the dinner table, at a workplace or during consultations.

By changing the subjects we choose to talk to people (of all ages) about and our approach to them (an equal one) we would challenge the ways that intergenerational communications can happen, thus leading towards an ageless society. 

Let us know what you think of this idea by rating it! To read more about the Equal Conversation Kit click here

The Good Gym aims to connect good causes and people who want to get fit.  It will help community and public sector organisations, charities and individuals by supplementing and supporting their services in small ways.

It will help people who want to get fit by giving them meaningful places to run to and by connecting them with good causes in their area. 

The Good Gym was founded in September 2007 and has been developed in consultation with fitness enthusiasts, older people and third sector organisations.

The volunteering challenge:
Research by UK volunteering organisation TimeBank has shown the difficulty of recruiting volunteers, and highlights the importance of developing volunteer-centric roles for volunteering. The Good Gym is a “fine grain” approach to volunteering, where participation is based on frequent low impact activities that are integrated usefully into the participant’s life.

A wasted resource:
People all over Britain work away furiously peddling, pushing, lifting, running and achieving no external benefits. 

The Good Gym aims to harness this energy by making it easier for people to channel this energy towards social good.

A new model of volunteering:
The Good Gym aims to develop a new model of voluntary action by focusing on the positive experience of the volunteer.  It is hoped that this approach will result in a higher number of volunteers.  The model aims to make it as easy as possible for people to integrate voluntary participation into their lives.

The service that is provided per episode may only have a small impact on the user but the ability to mobilise more volunteers should give the project a large impact overall.

Prospective focus: Loneliness and Isolation amongst the elderly: 
Loneliness and isolation are key issues for older people in Britain today.  Elderly people can sometimes go for days without any human contact. In the pilot project, the good gym aims to make a contribution to solving this problem.

Pilot Project Aims:

• To Develop a new model for voluntary action.
• To Provide regular human contact for elderly less mobile people.
• To provide elderly less mobile people with useful contact with the outside world and to increase their quality of life.
• To test a new way of engaging volunteers.

Increasing parental involvement in education

Socio-economic background is the leading determinant in the success of a child’s education. This project aims to address this by increasing parental participation in, and interaction with, their childrens’ education.

The project asserts that by branding education in a way that aligns with the parent’s ideas of success parental involvement will be stimulated.

This project was developed by Mike Gibbons (Innovation Unit), Rebecca King (Antigone), Ivo Gormley (thinkpublic), Alice Osbourne (thinkpublic) and Deborah Szebeko (thinkpublic) as a part of The Social Lab focusing on education.

The project will use aspects of marketing, popular media and business to re-position the school as an organisation that supports their own goals for their children and something which they can have a more active partnership with.

-To develop greater “buy-in” from parents for their children’s education.

-To re-frame the role of a school in the parents terms.

-To help reduce socio-economic.

-To develop the role of the school to be a place for parents.

-To develop a strong brand for schools that effectively sells education to parents.

The group identified the opportunity to make better use of technologies such as television, SMS and internet.

Opportunities for greater parental integration in the environment, planning and organisation were discussed and could be integrated with the New Education offering.

Pilot project:

This project will be tested in an area with poor parental engagement. Possibly an island community off mainland Britain.

A pilot project will have four phases:

Parent-led research:

Research into parent’s aims for their children and how this differs from how they understand the role of the school. Identification of aspects of education in which parents would like to play a larger role. Identification of aspects of education in which more parental involvement would be most effective.

Initial re-branding:

A re-design of all the school’s communications, using a wider rage of media working with parents and teachers. Re-branding will aim to indicate and promote identified areas of parental involvement and connect them with parents notions of success.

Testing:

Prototyping and testing of new communications and branded materials. Measurement of parental involvement in school. Testing and experiementing with other areas of parental involvement.

Opportunities:

Evaluation of project. Identification of opportunities surrounding re-branding, parental involvement and educational attainment.

Outputs:

• A re-branded new school
• Opportunity map for improving parental involvement in schools
• Evaluation of impact of re-branding
• A model that could be re-tested with another schools

The first Diplomas are being taught from September 2008, building up to 14 in different employment-related areas by 2013.  They join a plethora of other lines of learning and qualifications available for young people: GCSEs, A-levels, apprenticeships and other vocational learning.

How can young people understand this complex variety of qualifications available to this such that they are meaningful?

The project will encourage and enable young people to make short films about their experience of their courses and learning, their lives and their aspirations and to upload these films to YouTube.  These films will be a valuable resource for other young people to view when considering their options on their learning journey.  Collectively they will provide a rich resource of user generated content explaining the pros and cons to different learning pathways. Potential students would use these films to inform them about what each option feels like.

Aims

• To give young people an accessible information resources to help them choose what line of learning to take, informed by their peers.
• To create a ‘big-picture’ and apolitical view of the different lines of learning available for young people in the UK, and link to relevant films describing them.
• To encourage young people to create short films of their learning experiences and upload them to YouTube.
• To create a rich resource of films over a breadth of subjects and lines of learning that will help young people make informed education choices for their futures.

Opportunities

• A large number of young people use Bebo, find a way of working with this online platform.
• Capitalise on YouTube’s viral qualities and its ability to spread content quickly.
• Award young people cash prizes or run competitions to encourage good content.
• To create a national portal that could be adapted at a local level providing local specific content and links
• Partner with Government site (DCSF or QCA communications about the Diploma).  DCSF are looking for positive stories about the Diploma.

Pilot project

The pilot project would partner with a consortium delivering the creative and media diploma.  It would offer a project brief for students to document their learning experiences and those of their friends on different pathways.  This would seed the project with a range of good content.

1. Young People-led Research
   Research young people’s questions and challenges with understanding lines of learning.  Investigate what influences a young-person’s decision and identify opportunities for better information and partnerships with existing information and guidance bodies.
2. Develop Creative and Media Diploma brief
   Work with a consortium to write a good project brief for young people to record their and their friends’ experiences of particular lines of learning.
3. Develop (or partner with) online resource
   Build a site that pulls appropriately tagged videos from YouTube to a central location to deliver information and guidance.
4. Testing
   Launch site in partnership with an Information and Guidance organisation and measure web statistics.  Allow users to rate and comment on videos and measure feedback.
5. Promote
   Promote like mad!  Get everyone really excited.