Lift11: Marcel Kampman, Reinventing schools — project Dream School [en]

[fr] Notes de la conférence Lift11 à Genève.

Live and India-lagged notes from the Lift11 Conference in Geneva. Might contain errors and personal opinions. Use the comments if you spot nasty errors.

Three stories: about himself, the project, the school.

Is from a small village near Amsterdam, born there, lives there, works from there. Works in the train a lot — his office! College drop-out (no diploma but did study). Works in an informal network of business/design people, aged 16-60. Balances work and play (cool projects like conferences — Picnic).

Met a guy who had the opportunity to build a new school from scratch. Their kids are roughly the same age. Peter was really passionate about doing things differently. Create the best school for the Netherlands (not of) — even the world. Stress though, architect selection.

Ended up gathering a bunch of smart “TED Talk” guys (Ken Robinson, Jeff Jarvis, John something…) — after a tweet, another contact from New Zealand!

Good things about dreams: they’re unlimited. Schools, however, are very limited.

Idea: school is practice for the world.

Created a foundation to really commit themselves to the project. The problem: the dream gap.

At birth, you are 100% potential. You can become anything. At 22, you’re “educated”. Finished. Education waterfall: you make choices and restrict your potential as time goes by. *steph-note: not sure I really agree with this image. In a way it’s true, but on the other hand you develop the capacity to do so much more than what you could do before. I suspect some “maximizer” bias here.*

You get educated out of your full potential, says Marcel.

Before kids go to school, 98% creativity, and only 2% left by the time they quit high school. The space between the waterfall and the things you could become (full potential) = the dream gap.

Objective: close the dream gap. They do it by doing daily. Involve students in organisation of Picnic, real-estate project (shopping mall).

How? Organize moments. Kick-off meeting in Shipol airport.

Picnic, TEDx Youth.

2011: DreamCentral. A week with a huge bunch of people.

Also try to create tools.

School now: 3000 students, 300 teachers, existing environment — but before building the school they need to know what it’s going to be about and what it will stand for.

When you dream, transparency (in architecture) is a nice thing. But it’s not that nice in practice. *steph-note: thinking of all those big huge glass buildings I’ve seen in Pune and Bangalore this last month*

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