New models of education?

Florent Orsoni, director of the City Design Lab, looks back at the genesis of the Atlantic Youth Creative Hubs (AYCH) project and its evolution. This European program, supported by INTERREG Atlantic Area and carried by 14 partners, gives many young people access to a platform of experts and tools to develop social and environmental innovation projects.

Engaging sensitive innovation

The Atlantic Youth Creative Hubs project started as a premise: fostering the development of innovative start-ups among young people through (accelerated) learning of new technologies and development methods. But questions from youth professionals, and subsequently from young people themselves, call into question this approach which consists only of catalyzing and accelerating "innovation".

With the first projects and discussions, the whole philosophy of AYCH is evolving, and us with it. The project now tends to seek to "engage" young people, to find new dialogues and educational methods, rather than finding the right technology and the right method to develop. It has taught us to think in a new “sustainable” way rather than frantically searching for the technological miracle.

What do we imagine for the future ? Please take the “risk” to dream and to make our wildest projects become reality. The linear process of development is being challenged in favor of a culture of prototyping, trial and error and more localized development. Projecting ideas (bright mirror) as images is a way to engage, encourage dialogue, develop projects and break away... from theory to action…

Aych is a way to make our projects become a reality and unlock the boundaries of imagination. We need to brand these new ideas to be ourselves the change we want to see.

As part of the AYCH project, L’École de design Nantes Atlantique and its European partners are organizing the Creative Jam "Reinventing the Future" in Santo Tirso. This 100% online event will take place on December 10th and 11th, 2020. The first day will be dedicated to an ideation workshop organized by the school and 15 creative workshops of your choice. The second day will allow you to boost and pitches your idea as a team in the form of a hackathon, supervised by international experts. Each member of the winning team can win 1 GoPro and a Creative Experience.

Registration on www.aychcreativejams.eu/register/