Hasta La Ideas

The Ideas Foundation’s I Am Creative initiative works with schools and brands to provide live briefs to secondary school children, introducing them to the advertising industry along the way. In its latest project, E.ON asked for ideas to motivate communities to save energy

Established ten years ago, the mission of the Ideas Foundation is to increase diversity in the advertising industry by working with schools on education projects, running workshops to encourage students to consider advertising as a career and delivering work experience, internships and apprenticeships in advertising to provide a pathway to that career. I Am Creative aims to enable students to discover the creative skills and interests they never knew they had, whilst educating them about the career choices those skills offer them.

The Ideas Foundation works with brands to create a range of ‘live’ briefs (see current list here). It will then organise two sessions with participating schools. In the first, Ideas Foundation workers and volunteers from the ad industry come into the school to run brainstorming around the brief and to introduce the basics of advertising. In a second, follow-up session, the students present their ideas. A winner, or winning team, for each brief is chosen by judges from the industry. They receive £200 of high street vouchers and a place on the Ideas Foundation’s ‘progression group’ The Ladder through which they receive further information and support about the industry so that “they get a head-start to getting into the creative industries, beginning with an all-expenses paid Progression Day hosted in London”.

The E.ON brief asked students “to create a campaign to help motivate your community to save energy. Your idea can come in any shape or form. You could organise a event, poster campaign, or something completely original! It is hoped that your idea will make a real different to people’s behaviour in order to protect the planet.

“They don’t just want people to notice the campaign, E.ON want them to change the way they use energy in their daily lives as a result of your idea. You will need to think about how people’s minds work in order get them to change their behaviour. By identifying a target audience within your community you will be able to tailor your campaign to maximise your message and make a real difference to the future of the planet!”

The winners of the latest brief are Chelsea Jenks, Olivia Mathews, Sarah Voce and Madeline Prendergast, who are all Year 9 students (age 13/14), studying Design Technology, at the George Spencer Academy in Nottingham. Their idea proposed a human-sized hamster wheel that, once spun, would charge a mobile phone.

The hamster wheel would tour around different areas of the UK including schools, music festivals and E.ON stores, informing people about the amount of energy required to charge their phones. Their slogan ‘Spin til it Hertz’ was loved by all the judges who also commented that he students were incredibly professional in their pitch creating a short film to introduce their idea (see above), 3D drawings and a model hamster wheel to demonstrate their designs.

Runners-up were Christopher Mee, Ioana Berceanu and John Nshimiye, who are in Year 13 (age 17/18) at Nottingham Academy. They created a campaign targeted at families within which was an interactive poster asking the general public to switch off a giant switch. In doing so, the poster would reveal an interesting fact about energy consumption.

This group also considered how the campaign would work within the Nottingham E.ON store, designing T-shirts for staff to wear, which they handprinted for the panel of judges to see.

CR recently went along to a London school to watch an I Am Creative session in action. We will be reporting back on the project in a future issue of the magazine.

CR in Print
The January issue of Creative Review is all about the Money – well, almost. What do you earn? Is everyone else getting more? Do you charge enough for your work? How much would it cost to set up on your own? Is there a better way of getting paid? These and many more questions are addressed in January’s CR.

But if money’s not your thing, there’s plenty more in the issue: interviews with photographer Alexander James, designer Mirko Borsche and Professor Neville Brody. Plus, Rick Poynor on Anarchy magazine, the influence of the atomic age on comic books, Paul Belford’s art direction column, Daniel Benneworth-Gray’s This Designer’s Life column and Gordon Comstock on the collected memos, letters and assorted writings of legendary adman David Ogilvy.

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