Nesta Failure Fest: Education, Innovation and Enterprise

Date: 22.11.2012 18:30 - 20:30

Location: Nesta, 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE

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We're all used to case studies and presentations reflecting heroic successes. But what of the things that went wrong? Aren't we always reflecting on how much we can learn from failure. The Economist says "Fail Often, Fail Well" and "Failure is often a better teacher than success". Others take it further when it comes to innovation and enterprise indicating you should "Fail Early, Fail Fast, Fail Often" in great product design.

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Now we're not sure how this plays out when it comes to GCSEs and the EBacc, or in educational entrepreneurship but we are going to discover as Nesta hosts an evening of fun and failure. Our Failure Fest focus was innovation in education and brought together short snappy presentations in which our brave presenters reflected on what they’ve tried and hasn’t worked, and what we all might learn from the experience.

Our brave presenters included:

• Dawn Hallybone - Teacher with over 17 years' experience. She is particularly interested in Games Based Learning and the use of web 2.0 software to encourage children with their learning
• Emma Mulqueeny - Founder of Rewired State and Young Rewired State: Coding a better country. She is best known for her campaign to teach our kids to code.
• Tony Parkin - Educational technologist. His main challenge remains keeping the educational technology focus on the first word, whilst so many want him to talk about the second.
• Annika Small - Nominet Trust's CEO. She is a social entrepreneur who is passionate about how digital technology can be used imaginatively to tackle long-standing social problems.
• Jim Wynn - Promethean's Chief Education Officer. Jim is responsible for the company's education strategy.
• Tom Kenyon - Nesta's programme director for education in a digital environment and former head of digital for Jamie Oliver's production company, Fresh One
• Rajay Naik - Director of Government Relations at The Open University and a UK Board Member of the Big Lottery Fund, the largest funder of charities in the UK

Claudia Barwell learning director at Suklaa, hosted the event. Having worked in education for the last fifteen years with both adults and young people she knows a thing or two about failure.