Meet Ignite, the Organisation Who Have Been Unleashing Creative Sparks for 20 Years

With an abundance of programmes to get involved in, from the Urban Nature Project, to the Nottingham Festival of Science and Curiosity, Ignite! has been engaging with the city’s young communities for twenty years. So, where did it all begin?
I was working then at Nesta, the National Endowment for Science Technology in the Arts. Nesta was set up to bridge the gap in the National Lottery funding programs around awards to individuals, innovation and talent. I was helping to support awarding extraordinary grown-ups. I proposed, why don't we try a junior version? Why don't we see if we can identify exceptionally creative young people and then find ways to develop their talent and support them on their journey through the early stages of their careers. Luckily, they bought into that idea.

So in April 2003, we set off. We called it Ignite!, based on a quote from a Harvard Education Professor called Howard Gardner, which says, “Every young person has a spark of creativity in them. And it's the responsibility of the adults around that child to ignite that spark.” If we'd listened to the PR company that Nesta employed, we might have ended up being called Sprouts. I'm pleased to say we resisted. 

How did you start building this programme?
We began identifying and supporting ‘exceptionally creative’ young people between the ages of ten and 21. What exceptional creativity was, we weren't sure. And what was the best way to support emerging talent, we weren't sure. It was very much a pilot programme. Over the first three years of Ignite!, we worked with over 5,000 young people on creativity workshops and we directly supported 120 young people.

We supported them with money (from £1,000 up to £12,000) giving them an opportunity to work on a particular project, or to buy a bit of equipment or run some activities. We gave them mentoring support, invited them on creativity residentials, ran various activities with leading researchers into education and creativity, and mixtures of scientists, artists and other creative practitioners.

In 2006, Nesta changed direction. So we were ushered into independence, as I describe it. We then developed programs all around creativity, art and science. We ran an invention competition in association with Harvard University and Disney called the ArtScience Prize. We also ran projects for the regional development agency, and that's where we started programs like LAB_13, which is a space in schools that kids manage for their own investigations. We ran summer programs for teachers, and then in 2013, we started the Nottingham Festival of Science and Curiosity, which is still going every February.

What was the origin of the Nottingham Festival of Science and Curiosity?
We're more interested in creativity than art, and we're more interested in curiosity than science. Those are the principles that underpin all of our learning, that combination of creativity and curiosity. Then we added the third element of community. So in that centre of the Venn diagram of curiosity, creativity and community, we thought, let's start a festival that celebrates that. 

Sometimes science can seem a little bit remote, or it can seem a little bit like the preserve of research scientists in universities and research labs - mostly kind of beardy men with white coats. We wanted to say, actually, science is part of our everyday lives, and the root to that is curiosity. What are the questions that they have about the world for themselves? So, the festival started in 2015. In February 2024, it’ll be the eighth festival, and it's developing a really nice pattern of working together to bring the expertise of science off the campus, into community settings.

How have you harnessed creativity in young people from more deprived backgrounds?
Right back in the early days, we were very clear that we wanted to engage with young people in their own locations. Creativity and creative-thinking can emerge anywhere. It was very important to us that we weren't just picking up privately educated, tutored kids. Nottingham is not the most affluent city in the UK. Some wards in the city are on the lowest levels of the indices of deprivation, of multiple deprivation. We took account of that. We've done quite a lot of work in some of those areas. 

But then over recent years we have also picked up programs with particular groups, we've done work with a youth and community centre in Sneinton that has a particular focus on Roma population. We did a programme at the Ridge Youth Centre in Bestwood, where the young people were particularly challenging, but also reacting to challenging circumstances themselves. In the work that we've done with the festival, we've often targeted areas like Bulwell, working with schools in those sorts of areas as well. And that underpins all that we do. If you explore things that matter to them, like my space, my city, my world, you've got a much stronger form of engagement.

What is it about creativity that is so special?
First of all, it's innate. People say, ‘Oh, I don't think I'm creative’. That's partly a consequence of too close an association between creativity and the arts. Seeing and making connections is part of creativity. And if you can do that, then all kinds of other solutions to problems become possible. Creativity is also about having ways of thinking that help you out when you're stuck. Okay, I'll take a break. I'll take a walk. I wonder if there's an idea. Knowing what to do, when you don't know what to do. Another element of creativity is recognising when you make those connections. That feeling you get when you get it, a kind of boost of surprise and delight. That is not only a chemical reaction in the brain that gives you a buzz, but it also is optimistic. It's a form of enjoyment and happiness. 

The other aspect of creativity is not worrying about not getting it right. That you'll set off without necessarily knowing where you're going, or where your destination is. That willingness to let yourself just go somewhere mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically, is an act of creativity. Now, if all of that is then motivated by curiosity; if creativity is the landscape that you're exploring, but curiosity is the driving force… I wonder why we're setting fire to the planet. I wonder why the tomatoes aren't ripening this year, I wonder why things are the way they are… that becomes the fuel of your creative engine.

@ignite_futures