Tom Symons: Hello, and welcome to the latest Nesta Talks To, our conversation event series with today's most exciting thinkers on the big topics related to our mission and innovation methods. Please do join in the conversation with us today in the comments box on the right-hand side of your screen and ask any questions throughout the event. Closed captions can be accessed via the LinkedIn Live stream.

We are Nesta, the UK's Innovation Agency for social good. We design, test, and scale solutions to society's biggest problems. Our three missions are to help people live healthy lives, create a sustainable future where the economy works for both people and planet, and to give every child a fair start in life. I'm Tom Symons, deputy director in the Fairer Start Mission, and I'm delighted today to be joined by Christian Bunting.

Christian is the founder and director of Bradford Birth to 19 which leads place-based improvement projects in the North of England and increasingly across the UK. Based in St. Edmunds Nursery School in Bradford, Birth to 19 is a leading player in early years education in the UK. It is designated as a Department for Education's early years stronger practice hub for Yorkshire and the Humber, which will see it provide improvement support for the region's childminders, private nurseries, and schools.

Christian's organisation also leads the innovative 50 Things to Do Before You're Five initiative, a digital offer for families including an app, website, and social media campaign. 50 Things is now in place in 20 local authority areas across the UK reaching well over 500,000 children. Christian's interest is in research and data-informed strategy which connects health and education policy, enabling sustained progress and outcomes for all children and young people, especially those growing up in disadvantaged circumstances. Christian, a very warm welcome to Nesta. How are you?

Christian Bunting: Thank you for having me-- I'm well today. Thank you for having me.

Tom Symons: Brilliant. Well, what we're going to do today is we're going to have a kind of 20 or 25 minutes of just me talking to Christian about the work he's been doing with Bradford Birth to 19, and then we will take some questions from the comments as they come through. So to kick us off, Christian, I wonder if you could just tell us a bit about yourself and the inspiration for your work on Bradford Birth to 19.

Christian Bunting: Yeah, of course. It's a tricky question that, really, around my inspiration because I suppose I'm a person who's not really ever had a particular plan. I didn't have my future mapped out in front of me. I'm a teacher by training, although back in the day when I left University, I was working on-- for peace and reconciliation charities and campaign groups looking at the situation in Yugoslavia, actually, and former Yugoslavia and then the Horn of Africa.

And then I went into teaching, and then I had the opportunity through a conversation to come and work at St. Edmunds Nursery School in Bradford where I moved to after having taught in London. And I was-- I've just been knocked over at that point by the team at St. Edmunds, the amazing work that they do. It's part of a federation of two nursery schools working in Girlington and the Manningham areas of Central Bradford, both two areas really significantly affected by socioeconomic disadvantage but with some wonderful children and fantastic parents.

And the team there just not knock me over with the wonder of the work that they were doing. And an opportunity came there to lead their teaching school as was and to build that organisation. And I suppose it was the opportunity to do something which was going to make Bradford a better place to grow up and to achieve your dreams and to do something which is going to be a lasting contribution towards social mobility. I work with great people. I have a fantastic team around me and in Bradford Birth to 19.

And we're all motivated by trying to do the best we can to challenge the system and to provide some solutions that are going to lead to reduced health inequalities, improved educational outcomes, narrowing of the gap. And those problems still persist. They've been made worse by the COVID pandemic, but that's what motivates me. That's what's motivated me to kind of build this organisation.

Tom Symons: Fantastic, and can you give us an overview of what Bradford Birth to 19 does, the sorts of things that you offer?

Christian Bunting: Yeah, I mean, it's a kind of a tricky one when you lead a complex organisation, and you sometimes get drawn into these conversations, what it is that you do. And I kind of say this is going to take a little while because there are a lot of things that we do, and that's because social-- I suppose social immobility and disadvantage is a really complex beast. There are loads of really cross-cutting causes that we need to get it-- of disadvantage that we need to get involved in trying to provide solutions for.

But in essence, Bradford Birth to 19 runs the Bradford Birth to 19 School Centre for Initial Teacher Training, and that's our SCITT, providing routes for postgraduates into qualified teacher status in Bradford, West Yorkshire, and now with a national cohort. And the social mobility reason behind that is that one of the best ways to get improved outcomes for children and young people is to get brilliant teachers in front of them who are going to stay in the profession and be research informed and do wonderful work.

We have our early years focus. It's our Institute for the Early Years with prizes. Our work leading the Early Years Stronger Practice Hub is our Things to Do Before You're Five offer across 22 local authority areas now because it's growing rapidly and our foundation and BA degree which we run in partnership with Pen Green Research Base. And then we have a really complex set of projects that we run in partnership with the Centre for Applied Education Research at the Bradford Royal Infirmary and also-- which is also in partnership with a number of other universities.

And that involves us doing a wide range of educational but health-related projects which are of interest to the Education Endowment Foundation, the DFE, the Department for Levelling Up and other organisations. And so because disadvantage is so complex, that's why we get involved in so many projects. Actually, we're trying to do less but do things in more depth and more scale rather than doing small projects. And that's kind of what we do in a nutshell. It's a fairly big nutshell, but yeah.

Tom Symons: Yeah, it's absolutely fascinating. I think that comment there about the complexity of the work demanding sort of activity on various different fronts is something that really resonates with us here at Nesta and I'm sure people in the rest of the sector. I wonder if we could just delve into a couple of those areas of activity and just get a bit more detail. So I know that the training component of what you're doing is really key, and all of the training that you're offering is informed by research and evidence. I wonder if you could give us a bit of information there about the kind of evidence that you're using and what that means for the pedagogy that you're using or that you're communicating through your training.

Christian Bunting: Yeah, I mean, our research base is, it's a really important part of what we do, and it's important. We run-- in one of our other projects, we run the Evidence Active Network, In-School Network in partnership with the Bradford Research School which is based at the Dixons Academy Trust and also in partnership with Bradford's Multi-Academy Trust as well. And so we are really committed to research-informed inquiry. We support others to become more research informed.

I have a particular interest in research-informed implementation methodology. So it's not just about finding the golden nuggets, but it's about supporting the settings and schools and practitioners to make good use of the evidence. But it's also-- so that piece of work, and it's attached to our SCITT training, our professional learning offer within the early years, and our wider professional learning offer. It's fundamentally connected to the work of the Education Endowment Foundation and what they're trying to do in their developing work, supporting them to make evidence space richer and better within the early years and within Special Ed but also reaching out to other kind of research bases as well.

But within Bradford, we've got some really amazing opportunities that come through the Born in Bradford cohort of the study, which is now developing into a wider study which we call Age of Wonder. And that is the remarkable data set which is the data-- I suppose underpinned by data sharing protocols between health records, education outcomes, what you might call records which reflect social circumstance, gives us a remarkable ability to be able to map and to do really interesting things in terms of control studies because the data system is so complex. And so from that we can pick up issues.

A couple of them are-- three of them around movement skills around neurodiversity and around eyesight and reading were made clear by the Born in Bradford data set. So as an organisation working with people who know research much better than me, often from universities, we're able to co-construct policy and offers which have their basis in academic research but also in the data. And I think that's what makes the work that's happening in Bradford really quite exceptional and worthy of the international attention that it's getting at the moment.

Tom Symons: Yeah, I know, it's really, really good work, well, certainly nationally-leading work if not world-leading work with data sharing within that cohort study. We turn now to 50 Things to Do. I'm sure our listeners or viewers today will be aware of it. I've enjoyed seeing it in various nurseries that I visited over the last year or so. I wonder if you could just tell us a bit more about where that came from and what inspired the activities that are within it.

Christian Bunting: Yeah, so it comes from the practice at St. Edmunds Nursery School. That's that it's based around that, and it's used in our practice at the school now. St. Edmunds and Lilycroft Nursery School Federation both have been outstanding, just outstanding for more than 15 years. And anybody who knows the early years' inspection framework knows-- will know that Ofsted coming knocking on your door much more frequently than you would do if you're in any other kind of institution. And we run our own private daycare as well, and we were outstanding judgments in terms of our Children's Centre when they were operating in Bradford.

It's based around our practice, but the ideas came from community consultation. And that's really important because this is not our app. It is our city's app. It has been the offer. Those 50 Things reflect ideas, in fact, there were over 400 of them that came through to us in community consultation, and we've kind of like pushed them together and synthesised them and gathered them together into age and stage appropriate offers which reflect local context, local culture, local social capital, and we put them together.

We made sure that they were research-informed. We made sure that we were using specialists from the special needs sector to make sure that they were really properly accessible for ages and stages. And we made sure that they were respectful of and inclusive of children right the way through from being born to the age of five, that they were available and guided by the principles of being low cost to low cost. So it's supporting, I suppose, our attempts to be socially inclusive.

And those things have evolved as well over time. So we continue to change them. We add resource to it, and we add depth to our offer to families. It's underpinned by really solid decades of high quality, early years pedagogical understanding. And the fundamental principles are around the benefits of experiential-- of experiences with your family leading to improved outcomes in language, in early learning, improved health outcomes as well, and improvements in terms of self regulation, mental well-being as well. We're trying to set out things right so that children can do better later on. And the evidence around the value of early years in leading on to improved health outcomes and education outcomes across your lifetime are very strong.

Tom Symons: And so important, as you were saying there, about the development of it to be including both the voice of community and parents and of experts as well in child development. What's been the reaction to it in nurseries and from parents?

Christian Bunting: I mean, it is so intuitively straightforward. So the reaction is really, really strong. We've had-- we don't have pedagogical disagreements with it. We don't have parents thinking that it's not for them. And I think because it's got-- people should go and have a look at it. They should go and download our app, even if they're not from Bradford or from one of the other 22 local authority areas. Still, you can get a sense of what it is.

But it's got photographs of children from Bradford-- permissions in place-- but photographs of children from Bradford and local resources and local parks and local wild spaces. So it looks like it's been created for that local area. It's been created with those people who are from around our area in the app themselves. And the co-construction element that goes alongside the creation of that app where you speak to parents and grandparents about things like the best places to gather conkers or to-- whether crocuses come through in spring or the best place to play Poohsticks or whatever it might be.

Those little nuggets of community knowledge then get put in the app so it looks like and feels like it's their app. So the reception is really, really strong. The co-construction makes it their app. This is our app. A load of our-- a load of communities in Bradford and in the other areas that we work have had experience of people from outside coming to improve their communities, and they have resistance to it. They don't have resistance to a local offer created by them, backed up with peer-to-peer workforce, which is what we use to inspire communities. It seems to work really well.

And that's why we have got such positive levels of engagement. Over time, we regularly, in all our local authorities, are moving towards 25%, 30% of all families in our areas having picked up the 50 Things to Do Before You're Five app offer on their phone, and we can see how they're using it. So I think it looks really good. We've had a really successful intervention here, really.

Tom Symons: Yeah, and just to echo those comments, really recommend everyone go and check it out if you haven't already and have a look at what it is. I wonder if-- we started touching there around the sort of impact and the reach that 50 Things to Do Before You're Five is having. What would you say to local authorities looking at this you haven't already got it about, what they could expect to find as the impact of implementing it in their area?

Christian Bunting: So in terms-- I mean, I searched a little bit on this already, but the engagement piece should look like, if it follows a pattern that we will move towards 25% to 30% of your local families downloading the app in Bradford through other things such as, I mean-- and we include this, but our posters and things like that. We also reach out to families in a different way. We do find because we study the behaviour and we-- through our focus groups, that some families like the app. Some families like the back of a kitchen door poster. Some of them use the websites.

So it is multiple levels of engagement on different digital and analogue resources, but you would expect to see engagement levels move forward. We hope to be able to say that we will be able to see a difference in terms of language development within a speech and language pathway. It's obvious one of the problems we have around quantitative data is that the impact of COVID has pushed everything backwards in terms of early years speech and language development and early health outcomes. So in our areas where we have 50 Things to Do Before You're Five, in lots of ways things are getting worse. But it's been getting worse across the whole of the country.

So we can't be really concluding around that one. The evidence that we've got where we've been able to measure it in settings seems to be really strong in terms of-- for those early years pedagogues on the call today-- seems to be really good in terms of receptive and expressive language. And the likely impact of that I think will be sustained as the projects get even more mature. The other thing that's really exciting, and it's the way our local authorities use 50 Things is that they use it to deal with issues around social disadvantage.

So some great work done by some of our West Yorkshire local authorities. Wakefield just comes to my mind. They do really powerful work in using the tool to tackle social disadvantage because they target it in those communities where the need is most. And this is remarkable because this is a home learning environment intervention. It's a programme for the home learning environment. Generally, the evidence piece suggests that way you do support for the home learning environment, it does not narrow the gap, and actually it's picked up more by middle class families where it's [INAUDIBLE] often without targeting.

But the targeting work that our local authorities do means that it's having impact where the need is most. The other thing that I think is extremely powerful around the 50 Things tool and, again, Wakefield have described it as this is that it's the golden thread that sits there around policy. So it's a thing that draws together your school's team who are perhaps interested in school readiness, your early years team who are interested in quality of provision and sufficiency. It brings in public health, and it brings in the museums and galleries service and into a common offer for families and a curriculum framework where they can put their events.

And it seems to motivate the teams that are surrounding children's early life experiences within local authorities. And increasingly, you'd expect to see buy in from the integrated care system as well. So in Bradford, we've got support from the paediatric teams within the local hospital, health visitors services as well. And it's that kind of join, the glue that brings those teams together in a way which has been really tricky, typically, to be able to do so. We're making good progress in that space, too.

Tom Symons: Yeah, and your comments earlier, I think, touched on the tension that we find often with new interventions which is that need for them to reflect different contexts when they're implemented in different places. What would a local authority need to do if they wanted to take on 50 Things and have it for their local authority? How would they take what you've done and make it reflective of their context?

Christian Bunting: I mean, we try to make this a really streamlined process. It's kind of route to market kind of conversation. So what we do is that we have a website which is, effectively, you pick up our website but in a way which is a really manageable piece of work. And you are given the areas that you need to alter. So all the 50 Things are the same in-- it's a national template. You pick up each one of those things, and it is into those spaces that you drop your pictures of your children, your local resources, and you drop the information about the local parks, the bus routes, and things like that.

It's this relatively straightforward piece of work, and it takes little officer time. We have gone from commission to launch in Sheffield during COVID in two weeks. Equally, other local authority organisations have been much more interested in a more extended community consultation piece of work. But it's straightforward. It's one job which will deliver you your app, deliver you your posters, deliver you all the visual resources that you need and the offer for families. It is-- we put the product together so it was scalable, so that it was straightforward, and that's our experience.

It's relatively straightforward. As Andrea, our national lead says, Andrea [? Layzell, ?] she said if she can do it, and she's not a technical person, then anybody can do it. I'm not a coder. You don't need any of those skills. So, yeah, it's straightforward.

Tom Symons: But that is brilliant and I'm sure very reassuring to hear, but I think perhaps sort of within that, there is still the question of how you have been able to innovate within public service systems and with public service organisations, places where we know innovation can be more challenging than in other places. And I wonder if you've got any reflections on your experiences of doing that, lessons you've learnt, and challenges that you've had to overcome when being an innovator in this space.

Christian Bunting: Yeah, I mean, it is-- we are beset by challenges, really, institutional challenges. The system doesn't work in a connected way. The integrated care system is premised on trying to build some of those connections, but they're just getting off the ground. It's going to take time. Having said that, the quality of the product and the support that we give it, the fact that we're passionate about it, and to be honest we meet with people who are really committed to it. The people in the local authority, it's successful in our other local authorities because it's driven with passion and determination.

And where it's driven most successfully, it's with commitment from the top with resource from the top to make it not just an offer for a family which is just an app that's out there but that it's connected, like we do in Bradford, with community activism, with a local project officer, with some additional resource support from the voluntary independent sector or from local charities or local businesses. And that makes it work, but actually, for reasons which I think are around how straightforward it is, and it's been very, very easy to get in into the mix, really.

People see that it speaks the language that they're trying to speak. And so if you're coming at it from a health perspective, if you're interested in public health, if your concern is around childhood obesity, it's around cardiovascular health, if it's around early supporting kind of positive mental well-being, we should say, you'll see the space. You'll see this app, and you'll see that it supports your outcomes.

If you're there from a local NHS Trust and you are-- you've got concerns around reducing hospital waiting lists, or you've got concerns around the overwhelming demand upon the accident emergency services and you can see something that 50 Things to Do Before You're Five, some of the impact that could have in terms of the social prescribing offer, then you'll pick that up and run with it. That said, we do need to keep putting a lot of effort into bringing those partnerships together.

Those services are stretched. By having 50 Things to Do Before You're Five in your area, we think the benefits are going to be really huge, and making the case for that, it is relatively straightforward. But it is-- I mean, it's Nesta's piece of work here, really. It's around-- this is a complex system, and ours is a holistic intervention. And therefore, it supports the whole system, but it's still a deeply complex piece of work to make happen, really. So it needs sustained partnership working, and that's been one of the biggest challenges that we've had is making sure we get all the people on board and that's backed up with strategy and resource.

Tom Symons: Fantastic. I just want to remind any viewers today that you can participate in our conversation by posting questions to us in the chat on the right-hand side of your screen. We did receive a couple of questions in advance of the event which I'm going to put to Christian now. And in the meantime, please do fire away with anything that you would like to ask.

The first question we received, Christian, was from someone who says, I am a nursery assistant in a private day nursery working as a key worker solely with a three-year-old girl in the nursery diagnosed with severe autism and who is non-verbal. Which play activities can I do in my setting with her to help promote her spoken language, which at present is totally absent? I'd like to be able to help her enjoy and access the most meaningful life experience as a child and as a future adult. I don't know if that's something that you're able to answer.

Christian Bunting: I mean, the first thing I'd say is thank you for-- it's not a politician's answer, maybe, but thank you for the work that you do. And I make the observations that there are many, many, many colleagues like you across the UK who are trying to do the same kind of thing, and where you've got a really significant lack of resource and joined up strategy for children with profound needs, such as the one that you're describing, and that we don't have an effective offer for children, particularly within the early years. So the struggles that you're going through are shared by thousands, probably tens of thousands of colleagues across the country.

And also I would say that the indicators seem to be of concern and, really, very clear about the growing numbers of children who are presenting with neurodiversity-- diversity issues, particularly on the autistic spectrum. So that, kind of not answering the question stuff, but I'm being aware of the issue there. I am not the earliest pedagogue in the room to be able to give you effective strategies to work with children who are non-verbal, but there are people out there who are in the right space to be able to give you those answers.

I would recommend, and wherever you are in England, you can go and get in contact with your Early Years Stronger practice Hub and say that you would like some support. And you would like some support both individually, and you would like some support from them in terms of the organisation within which you work, your PVI setting. And they're funded to give you that support.

Interestingly, when we've been reaching out in Bradford with our sector needs analysis, we've asked a whole load of people, in fact, in Yorkshire and the Humber, as to what their most important issues are, what they need support most in. The first one is around speech and language, which is not surprising. The second two are around SC&D and neurodiversity. And so there's an obvious presented really significant need around-- I suppose around this space. I'd also suggest that you get a look, really, at the Education Endowment Foundation resources that there are.

I make the observation-- the critical observation is that they're not at their strongest point in terms of special needs, but they have got a new released early years evidence store which has got work specifically focused around language. And there are things that you should be really worthwhile looking you around social communication and other strategies there, which I think would be worthwhile you having a look at, and they've got really a lovely selection of video resources for you to have a look at.

If you don't know where to look, I've asked and I've suggested that my email can be shared. Get in contact with me personally, and I will put you in contact with your local Early Years Stronger Practise Hub because I know the lead officers for all of them. And we'll make sure that you get through to the right people.

Tom Symons: Fantastic. On a slightly different tilt, the next question we had in advance was what would be the top three reforms that need to be made to the early years sector to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children? So just a small question there.

Christian Bunting: I mean, you have the staffing situation within the early years, which is in crisis at the moment, and it's in particularly in crisis within the private voluntary independent sector. You have a recruitment and retention issue. You have a really remarkable level of churn within that sector, and you have I suppose really significant issues around leadership. You are having PVI settings that are closing. You are having childminders that are giving up because they can no longer make it work.

We are in the middle of a cost of living crisis at the moment, and that's been most sharply felt by those colleagues who are paid the least. And so my first reform would be we need-- it would be to say that we need to fund early years properly. It's really deeply inappropriate that we ask colleagues to do some of the most difficult work that there is out there, and I would say exactly the same for the care industry I might-- as well to do really difficult work and to pay them very poor wages. So my first thing would be to-- around government taking leadership in this one and finding a way to make our early years workforce paid a better wage.

I was speaking with somebody most recently, and she had self-funded herself through a foundation degree, BA degree, had taken advantage for all the training that was available, really committed to early years, has moved on to becoming a room leader and then a deputy Centre manager for a PVI setting and still being paid a very low wage indeed. And was able to take on a job in a-- working for a car dealership and was paid 15,000 pounds a year more, and she didn't want to leave it. But you've got the reality of it, of many of those colleagues are in work from 8:00 in the morning until 6:00 at night, and they were asking too much of them.

So my first one would be around pay. I think there is a bigger policy lever there, which is around free universal childcare offer for all children up until the age of four. It will cost money, but it will be socially levelling. And my last one would be around making true of the promises that are in there in the integrated care system, government policy agenda to make sure that we connect health and education policy in a meaningful way, that it's aware of social circumstance. Because at the moment, outcomes for children and young people are going in the wrong direction.

So I describe this in Bradford. There is a lovely middle class area in the Bradford district, Ilkley, and I'm working Manningham and Girlington, or you could go to Homewood, or you could go to Ravens Cliff. And it's, say, about a 10 mile journey by the crow flies, and on that 10 mile journey, you go on a journey which also takes you on a 10 year life expectancy different journey as well, and I think it's 13 or 14 year healthy life expectancy. And I'm-- we need to do something about this. We need to continue to do something around social disadvantage and around levelling up in a really meaningful way and that we do that by getting involved in making the system work for children at the moment because we are in the middle of a public policy crisis around health and education.

Tom Symons: Yeah and couldn't agree more with you on the need for early years to feature more prominently in the levelling up agenda. A couple of questions have come through on the chat. First one from Philip Noble, how did you build-- how do you build on the given that the synchronised connection of brainwaves of mother and baby following birth kickstarts the learning process through communication, communicating speech, gaze, and movement? So I suppose a kind of question there on the very beginnings of life and how we can develop on those special connections.

So, again, it's a really specific, relatively technical question, and I'll give you a kind of more generalised answer. I'm not the person with that neuroscience background. I know people that you are. There is a fundamental policy question here is that we need to be working with a system which understands that, those connections across the whole of the first 1,001 days. It is around conception to age two. The premise of the question around work is accepted by me.

It is about working with families and working with moms and working with them all the way through that, those first 1,001 days. How do we get a policy offer that understands that is a tricky question in those local authority areas. Where you've got the Family Hub and Start for Life offer, you've got the opportunity to influence delivery to make sure that the questions you're rightly raising around neural pathway development, for example, in particular, are listened to.

I'll just give you a for instance, and I apologise for being a bit of a politician and not really answering the question and passing it on to getting in contact with the people who know more about what they're saying than I do. But we are in some really exciting research which is looking at the connection between fine and gross motor skills development, which would be called fundamental movement skills if you are approaching this with a health hat on, and neural pathway development. So looking at early particularly fine motor skill development into a really interesting Helping Handwriting SHINE project and the connections between that and reserve memory within key stage one and key stage two.

So really exciting work being done by the Centre for Applied Education Research which we work with. The how question that you ask there is really, really hard. So you need a technical specialist, of which I have to put you in contact with.

Tom Symons: Thanks, and next question has come through from Pete Donnelly. I founded a social enterprise teaching wheelchair skills to build confidence and independence. I'm currently co-producing an in-depth training programme with children, teachers, and parents to be delivered in schools and wondered what key lessons you learned in building relationships with schools and who you would recommend reaching out to in school networks and local authorities.

So, yeah, it's a really interesting question. It is how-- yeah it's a social enterprise, and I've done a bit of this work in a number of the organisations that have been funded like we were back in the day by Big Change organisation doing some fantastic work to support innovation. And one of the-- I come across cases like yours really quite frequently, which is I've got a really good idea with social enterprise. We need help in being able to get in contact with schools to get the ideas in there and get them into local authorities.

And there are-- I suppose why would-- there would be a couple of answers to this one. First of all, it would be around making sure you've got a really strong theory of change and that you've got some evidence as to the benefit for your particular intervention and the way you do things. And I'm sure you'll have that, but there is something about being really, really clear about what you're saying you're doing and what the benefits will be and who you're trying to work with.

Well, if you think about doing something around wheelchairs, that's really quite tricky because if it's around an inclusion piece of work for children who are wheelchair users but attending mainstream primary or secondary school, they're not likely to be very many of them, but their needs are really important. But if your focus is working around children with really significant movement skill-- movement needs, and they're attending special school, then it's a different type of approach you need to be making.

My general answer to this one is go-- take the help of friends as a small social enterprise who are much better connected probably than you are, which is why you're asking the question. So go through to organisations like us who don't do work in this space but are committed to it and would be able to help you meet the people because they already know them. So piggyback relationships that other people have. And then maybe trying to-- and it is about getting the attention of local authorities.

So if this is a kind of a sales question, but from a social enterprise point of view, don't try to sell to schools. Don't try to approach them individually as you would spend all your time and not getting much resource back from it. At the end of the day, you need to look at it around strategy. You need to try to connect with the key organisations. I might see if you can invest some time in going to some of the Combined Authority areas, so go and have a word with Tracy [? Brabin's ?] office, for example, who would be interested as a kind of like West Yorkshire offer. They might be interested in having a conversation with you.

That would be my general advice on that one, but I'm happy to pick up a-- drop me an email, and I'll get in contact with you. You can have half an hour, and I can see if-- what I can do to help. I do this stuff. It's-- if I can help, I will.

Tom Symons: That's very kind of you to offer personal support like that, Christian, and we'll make sure that your contact details are shared with attendees today so that they can get in touch with you. I'm going to invoke chair's privilege now to ask you another question, maybe a slightly unfair question, Christian. But you mentioned earlier that some of this is the work of Nesta, what you are doing, and I just wondered what you would like to see from organisations like Nesta who are there with a similar mission but who are perhaps not based in particular places but have other resources, networks, and such. What sort of things would you like to see Nesta do to support the work that you're doing and other organisations that you rate?

OK, so I know Nesta work in partnership, but those partnerships are really important. So this is I suppose a message for me to those people who fund things and can add value to things, and that's not just about the financial funding. It is about adding value and not to compete with each other, I would say. It is-- if you're looking at trying to make a profound play around social disadvantage, and you're going to do it on the Cumbrian coast or somewhere like that or-- it is to work in partnership. Rather than to continue to back piecemeal bits of work, the system needs to work together.

The government system needs to work together. The organisations like yours are acting in those spaces between policy, but you also need to work together. I think there is also something around-- I think it's around an approach to risk from your organisations because we were really lucky to be backed on an idea by Big Change. And the rewards were really-- have been really high, I think, for them in terms of their initial investment. So it is to do what you can using the skills that you've got and the knowledge that you have to back risky interventions and slightly risky ideas with good evidence and good proofs of promise in front of you.

But those opportunities to be-- are supposed to be high leverage projects. You'll be able to find some real shining stars on there. So also to be a more joined up and more risk-- and slightly less risk averse, I think, the benefits are there. But it's around join, really. You should be-- I would be delighted to be working in partnership with Nesta, with SB Fairbairn, with SHINE, whoever it might be with some government match funding, with maybe some private entrepreneurial backing as well to make a joined up offer that's going to be able to meet the needs of social disadvantage.

Because otherwise, you'll put an intervention in which will tackle that health outcome, but because you're not providing that connected to school and setting support, it doesn't have the bite that it needs to be. Or you're trying to do interventions in terms of improving reading outcomes, so this is the Glasses in Classes project that I've helped to support. You're supporting schools to get better with their reading curriculum, but unfortunately, the children can't see the page because they don't have spectacles. So that's why the system, it's an example of how the system needs to join. You need to work together and therefore to bring funders together to commit to a piece of work in a way which joins.

Tom Symons Critical takes are welcome. Just a reminder to our attendees that we have got a couple of minutes left, so if there's any further questions, please do pop them in the chat. There's something in your answer there, Christian, that I just wanted to pick up on and maybe explore a bit with you. You made a very good point about risk and about risk tolerance for new ideas. And I think that is incredibly important for the pursuing-- sort of pursuit of innovation and of transformative ideas. And sometimes I feel like what we're talking about there is something akin to a kind of venture capital model.

Christian Bunting: For sure.

Tom Symons Where we say we need big, transformative ideas. That means at the beginning, they're going to be a bit riskier, and so therefore, we have to be comfortable with a few of them not working out. And we'll take about 10 ideas, and if one or two of them work, great, because they've been transformative, and that compensates for the eight or so that didn't work out. And I'm sort of persuaded by that intellectually, but I suppose practically as an organisation that does occasionally fund things and has financial resources, I wonder what you would look for as the sort of signals that these are transformative ideas. What are the things that would give you the sense that these are bets worth taking?

Christian Bunting: I suppose what you be looking for is an evidence-based-- that it's evidence-based approach but that you can see evidence of impact already in place. I suppose the promising project kind of way of looking at things that the EEF would take would be reasonable. It's also about taking a-- to mitigate some of those risks, it's about backing organisations that have got capacity to be able to move forward at relative pace. That so if you're one person working on something, it's tricky to get enough of you to be able to do the thing that you need to be doing.

So it's better to, I think, support an innovation from a medium sized organisation which is still agile enough to be able to move [INAUDIBLE] rather than to backing a very large organisation or rather than backing a kind of like-- a tiny one. I think there's also a really important role to be played for-- played in how you can as a funder or as a person interesting in supporting projects to be able to connect those new project, those new innovations to make them less likely to be risky by giving them the support of somebody like me or people more qualified than me to give them the benefit of their experience.

We've made mistakes. I've made some poor calls, but we've done some really good things as well, and it's worked for us. And I've got some experience, and indeed, there will be loads of other people like that who've got some experience who will be delighted to work in partnership. And I get-- I guess for organisations like ours, that partnership is really important because by working with others, we can learn. But by working with others, they'll introduce us to people that would like to hear from us as well.

So that pro-bono-ness but still with some anticipated benefit in terms of relationships I think is something worthwhile backing as well. It's helped us, and I've helped others as well. And it's the right thing to do, and in it-- I guess without trying to sound all wonderful, if you behave well within this sector, then people will work with you. And if you are-- it's treat people as you want to be treated, and the results will generally come.

As a sort of final question, Christian, as we round out the session, I just wondered if there's anything you could tell us about what's coming next for Bradford Birth to 19 and the 50 Things series, anything in the pipeline that you'd like to let people know about.

Christian Bunting: Yeah, for sure. So 50 Things to Do Before You're Five has-- I'm trying to think of the right metaphor here-- has had a little baby. So that baby is 50 Things Primary. Unusually, it's a slightly older age range baby than a younger baby, but anyhow, not sure what the metaphor is. But 50 Things Primary now is out there, and our Birth to five-year-olds have grown up. 50 Things to Do Before You're Five will be five in June.

So we've now got another offer, and I'm really, really excited about what that can do based around the same kind of 50 activities to do but this time around building social capital, around giving the breadth of experiences that are going to enable children to grow into young people, who've got the experiences that they can wrap around their qualifications which means that when they go and interview, they can talk with the breadth of life experience that are going to mean they're going to get the job and also inspire them to go and do things that they've never done before. So that's coming up, and also a piece of focus work that we're going to be doing in initial teacher training.

There's a couple of people who've joined the call today who've got background in special, and we'll be doing a focused piece of work around teacher training opportunities for people wanting to get qualified teachers, teacher status, in special schools as well.

Tom Symons: That's brilliant. Thank you so much for your time, Christian. I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation. You've given me lots of food for thought and lots of positivity and optimism about what's happening next. Thank you, too, to everyone who's joined the call today and has watched along with us. I hope you've found it a good session and will continue to attend Nesta Talks To events into the future.

All there is left to say really is thank you to everyone and to my colleagues for helping put on this event. And we hope to see you again soon. Thank you very much.