Designathon Works

Surprisingly to many adults, when children are asked what change they would like to see in the world, they don’t ask for more time to play or sweets, in fact they want to cure cancer or remove all plastic from the ocean. With our method we highlight the natural ability of children to come up with creative technological concepts for a better future for the planet and people. Our goal is to help empower and unleash children’s creativity and to spread awareness about the importance of engaging children as co-designers of society.

Long Description

Despite growing use of co-creation and co-design methodologies in the public and private sectors we are yet to see many examples of children being taken seriously as co-designers in relation to societal and environmental questions.

If you ask children What would you like to change in the world and what could you make to create that change? they don’t, as some people might expect, call for more sweets or playtime. In fact, in our repeated experience with designathons they come with concepts such as Bricknator: a machine that process used plastic into building bricks; an Urban Tree-Alley: solution to clean the air of C02; a drone that floats above highways and cleans the air for pedestrians.

Our annual Global Children’s Designathon is a day dedicated to celebrating what the world could be like when children design better futures using new technologies. During the event held every year in November, children from all over the globe come together to work in parallel and design solutions for the better world. They discuss around the specific theme, build prototypes and present them to each other via a live connection, to the live audience and to the wider public via media.

Theme’s we worked so far: food, mobility & waste, circular economy and the coming November the theme is water.