Creativity in learning — a collaboration between C2 & WISE Qatar
One of the pillars of C2 is to bring creativity and innovation to the way we learn. Over the years, we’ve invited some of the top thinkers in education to bring their expertise to the conversation and partnered with organizations like the World Innovation Summit for Education (WISE).
We are excited to share that, this year, we’ll be coming full circle with WISE and delivering a unique C2 Lab experience at their biennial summit on the future of education.
This global initiative of the Qatar Foundation will bring together 2,000+ participants from over 100 countries in the fields of education, technology, social entrepreneurship, global development, media and philanthropy. The theme? “Co-Exist, Co-Create: Learning to Live and Work Together.” We’ll be infusing the experience with meaning and play to inspire new creative ideas towards the future of education in times of global disruption and economic uncertainty.
Our story together began between two friends from school — Elyas Felfoul, Director of Research and Content Development at WISE and Chloe Langevin, C2’s former VP of Business Development. WISE’s theme in 2014 was creativity, a perfect fit for C2. The two reconnected from their respective positions to explore this idea of life’s learning; WISE diving into schooling, and C2 representing continued learning.
On our side, WISE’s work bringing together education innovators from around the world — inspired a new methodology, which is now a pillar of our events. The environments we create are designed as metaphors for the topics that they address, providing a purposeful learning experience to participants by engaging both the heart and the mind.
I came into the picture in 2016 when Sebastien Turbot, the Global Programs Director of WISE delivered a talk on his inspiring career in global development and now as a scout for the silent heroes of social change. He wowed the crowd, myself included, with a talk that brought an important dimension to creativity: demonstrating the powerful impact of social innovation. This tuned my ears towards something that would sweep both my professional and personal direction.
The conversation continued throughout the year about how we could bring some of these changemakers into C2 in a meaningful way. For our 2017 edition, we collaborated to build a program within C2 focused on supporting the livelihoods of refugees called Ideate for Impact. I had just come back from volunteering at a refugee camp in Greece and was deeply moved by the experience, hoping to find a way to mobilize the creativity of the business leaders at C2 towards this important issue. At the same time, WISE was exploring mobile solutions to bring education to displaced populations.
Through their accelerator program, they brought an organization called Ideas Box into the fold. This multimedia center is, essentially, a school in a box that can be brought to underserved communities, including refugee camps. They led a three-day program designed to engage businesses to leverage their core competencies towards making a positive impact on displaced populations, alongside WISE, the Radcliffe Foundation, OpenIDEO, Burners Without Borders, and refugees in Montreal.
Fast forward to today, we’re tying up the last touches on our custom C2 Lab at WISE 2017 in Doha, Qatar that will engage their community to imagine the future of schools. We’re doing this using our signature collaborative methodology of meaning and play. It’s only just beginning, but I am beyond excited to continue to work alongside WISE in building creative ways of learning.
If you want to follow along with our adventure in Qatar, you can follow C2 International on the following channels, where I’ll be posting updates:
Instagram: http://instagram.com/C2International
Twitter: http://twitter.com/C2International
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/C2International/
