It’s our 15th birthday and to celebrate we’re sharing 15 stories highlighting key achievements, upcoming projects and successes of some of the people and businesses we’ve helped over the past 15 years.
To kick off our birthday celebrations, we sat down with our cofounders Lindsey Hall and Matt Little to reflect about everything the organisation achieved so far and lies ahead.
In 2015, Real Ideas took on the restoration of the Market Hall in Devonport with an aim to breathe new life into the Grade II listed building. Working with an array of local and national businesses construction began in 2019 to carefully restore the building into a world-class space for digital innovation and learning.
A community of collaborators, big thinkers, creatives, tech pioneers, environmentalists, coffee enthusiasts, food makers, designers, writers and so much more.
There’s no one size fits all for who are members are, but we’re proud to say from launching the membership in the midst of 2020 lockdowns there’s now over 3,000 of you, and we’re so glad to have you here.
During Illuminate Light Festival, we invited Primary schools to take part in our Immersive Worlds Workshop.
Children who took part had the opportunity to watch a film in the immersive dome at Market Hall, which focused on the climate crisis under the sea, and then used the event space to recreate the world they had seen in the dome using light, sound and props from Plymouth Scrap Store.
Led by Real Ideas and Future Creators, Badge Nation is a powerful collective of employers, schools, colleges, training providers, and informal educators.
Badge Nation is committed to recognising what individuals accomplish outside of formal accredited qualifications, using digital badges to motivate learning and ambition. In this video we’re going to talk about who we are, what we do, but most importantly – why we’re doing it.
Becoming a more inclusive organisation is not only the right thing to do, it is also the smart thing to do for your business. Having a diverse workforce, diversity of thought and diversity of style leads to better productivity, more dynamic teams and better business practice. Real Ideas supports organisations on their journeys to making these changes.
Ed Hart, programme lead at Real Ideas, explains how businesses and organisations can adapt and change to become more inclusive in their recruitment process.
Starting out as a maker is tough, which is why we are committed to supporting emerging creatives in our spaces with our campaign, Start Something Print.
This year we are supporting 9 print focused short-term residencies for graduates, students and emerging artists/makers in Ocean Studios. Francessca Hawkesworth, Programme Coordinator at Real Ideas explains a little more about the campaign.
Over the last 15 years, young people have been at the heart of the work we do at Real Ideas. We have been involved in various different programmes along the way, but our commitment to young people has remained the same. We work with young people to explore their passions and proactively work alongside them to reduce barriers and uncover their skills and talents.
We are making a concerted effort not to offer platitudes or virtue signals and we don’t profess to have all the answers but we are listening and learning and prepared to stand up for what we believe in and be challenged for those beliefs.
In the summer of 2020, when the UK was locked down due to COVID, Real Ideas launched *Start Something* – a free programme of business support and fully funded Membership to help brilliant enterprising ideas get off the ground in the most challenging of times.
We caught up with Heyl Bakery, a Start Something business to see how the project has supported them to grow:
Real Ideas has worked in partnership with Plymouth City Council and a number of environmental enterprises to deliver a 6-week learning programme for 18 – 25 year olds in Plymouth called Green Thinkers.
It aims to grow participants skills and confidence to work in green land-based jobs. Young people learn from a combination of creative group and project work along with hands on work experience in farms, parks and community gardens across the city. The programme not only supports young people into work, but it also supports Plymouth’s green agenda by raising awareness and filling green vacancies. And on top of that, it’s hugely contributing to saving the planet!
Among many other organisations, Real Ideas has an environmental plan called One Planet Living, a plan based on a framework designed by Bioregional.
Our environmental focus is at the forefront of decision making, we understand the climate crisis is real and that strong, positive action is needed in order to make change.
We want to be leaders and show that we can contribute to improving the state of our planet, part of that contribution is One Planet Living. Steve Clark had a chat with Avani Gupta to explain how we can all help to drive that change.
