GrowinG Future innovators - ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative ...

Young visitors to The Silver
Factory: Andy Warhol
for Kids interact with
Warhol’s 1966 installation
Silver Clouds at the ‘Andy
Warhol’ exhibition in 2007.
Photograph: Natasha Harth.
162 www.ideasfestival.com
Engaging with innovators of all ages and
domains was the focus of The IDEAS Festival
in Brisbane, a triennial event established “to
present ideas, promote public debate, and to
foster and celebrate innovation.” 162 In 2009,
Queensland’s ‘Year of Creativity’, the festival
launched its first dedicated program for
schools, the Think Do Tank, which was held
in the cultural precinct of the Queensland
State Library and the Gallery of Modern
Art. This program for students in years 6 to
10 consisted of lectures, panels and short
workshops with artists, futurists, inspiring
youth, scientists, urban planners and many
other kinds of innovators. Jane O’Hara, the
festival’s Education Program Director, says
“there’s actually something very powerful
about being in the same room as someone
as they speak passionately.” As she sees
it, broad exposure to actual innovation
exemplars helps to reinforce that “there is no
one formula” for innovating. Her choices in
programming were informed by young people
themselves, through a consultation group she
set up at the start of her appointment:
The advisory team was from an inner city
local primary school, ten Year 7 students,
and they brought such air to those
programming considerations. Their interest
in design, ecology and the environment,
and their role in creating a sustainable
future for themselves, really gave me an
opportunity to study and to listen to what
they were saying and then interpret that....
And we made sure we had young people
speaking on the stage as well, so they could
really relate to them.
Growing future Innovators: a scoping study 43