+Futures talks with Kim Mackenzie-Doyle

Education provides us the building blocks of a better future – to navigate the big challenges facing us as workers, communities and in society, and to do so in a way that works for the many. This is the first in a series of interviews, with people working at the forefront of change in this area, exploring the question – What do we need to do to unlock a more evolved future for education?

Kim Mackenzie-Doyle is the founder and CEO of the educational initiative The B!G Idea, which runs project-based programmes with secondary schools to help ‘equip students and learners with a creative mindset’. Through the programme, the students tackle briefs, working together in teams to research and better understand genuine societal challenges, and then to conceive and develop ideas that might tackle them.

While many industries outline a need for future workers who are more creative, agile and collaborative in their approaches these currently aren’t central to the second-level subject matter, or to the approaches to learning. In our discussion, we explore Kim’s journey and motivation, what bringing these learning approaches into the curriculum looks like, what it offers the students, and what it means for wider education and future society.

Scott: I might just start by asking how you got to here and your motivation for starting The B!G Idea?

Kim: The origin story of The B!G Idea is tied into my background. I had a really unenjoyable secondary school experience. I have a really busy mind, really busy hands and trying to keep me on a seat for any length of time is torture.

I probably wasn’t a great student, either. And I was actually told to marry well, by the guidance counsellor. And to be fair, I did (laughs). I wanted to do design, but my parents thought there was no money in design and so I should study science and make something meaningful.

So I went to study science, it was clear very early it wasn’t for me so I dropped out for the rest of the year and then started in Industrial design. I just learned about what I didn’t want to do in that year as a dropout and got really focused, almost Mission critical.

I thought – ‘I have to get through this and do well and really find my thing because it has to work.’ I loved it, working with my hands, with ideas, thinking differently, and really challenging myself to get comfortable in the uncomfortable.

I developed a speech impediment when I was really young, so I hated verbally presenting, but I loved making and doing and breaking and building and was amazing in the workshop. I was great at sketching and the process. And I showed up.

I wasn’t top of my class, I dropped some points, and I was absolutely devastated. And then the lecturer said, ‘Kim, you’re the first one that’s gonna get a job. All the lecturers are talking about you and putting you forward for jobs because you turn up, you don’t stop until the job’s done, and that’s what people want.’

So I got into Design Partners, which was my dream job.

I was there 13 years. It was trial by fire, they re-educated me. Day one completely turned me on my head. I thought I knew everything after leaving college, and I didn’t know anything. I was retrained to pitch, to present, to develop an idea, and that was really tough.

It made me have the resilience of a rhinoceros. I could just go through anything, and I loved working there. And then I had babies, and the clients were all over the world and I just couldn’t do it anymore. So I left heartbroken.

So finding creativity, and developing all those skills around it, it gave me building blocks to propel me. I didn’t know how to do well, or fit into the concept of success that has been built for kids. So I was just kind of an afterthought with my teachers. But I was really good at art. I was really good at making.

And that’s what led me to The B!G Idea. To tap into that experience and use it to unlock the next level of opportunity for all students, because it’s so accessible.

It’s that design thinking process that has delivered so much commercially for companies and industries. And turning that process into building blocks for the students. And showing how they can use them on the big societal challenges, or the personal problems that they might face. To help them succeed. To unlock real potential, and different facets of their knowledge and ability.

It helps them to think about how we communicate, how we treat each other, the decisions we make. When they turn on the news, it’s a really scary place. And young people just think – what can I do about it. Climate change, mental health. It’s just absolutely crazy. When it comes to this stuff, how could schools keep up to be fair? You know it’s a really immediate and massive problem.

Schools deliver a very particular curriculum, but there is a growing world of challenges beyond that, which students and young people need to be prepared for. This is where those building blocks can help. Help them reframe things, think differently, be more agile, make better decisions and better choices because they’re the ones that are going to have to change it.

Scott: Yes, it feels like the education system was designed very much for a world that was fully formed, and worked in a very particular way. There were clear career paths, risks were well understood. I guess it was a world that felt much smaller, more controlled.

And so that’s a big shift. That world doesn’t feel like it exists anymore. In fact it almost seems the opposite is true – uncertain, hard to navigate, fast-moving and changing.

For that old world, the building blocks were reading, writing and arithmetic, what feels really interesting about The B!G Idea is the shift to the building blocks being creativity, communication and critical thinking.

Kim: Yes, exactly. It’s about thinking and understanding the challenges. And then having the understanding of the impact that your decisions will actually make to other people or the planet. Imagine what it would be like if future politicians had those building blocks.

Scott: What a difference!

Kim: What a difference!

Scott: It makes me think of the idea of head, heart, and hands. That a student should be able to enter into a subject in the way that they feel is the right way for them, or that builds on their strengths and abilities.

Kim: When you have kids in school you realise the importance of teachers. But for the students, they almost have to choose a career in first year, even though they say you’re not. They’re choosing subjects, and their pathways feel like they’re being set in stone.

So we can come in at a point and be a checkpoint. No matter what direction they’re going. It’s about giving them an opportunity to navigate the world in a different way.

We’ve seen really amazing change in young people. But it’s in different ways for everybody.

On one particular mental health project, one of the team at the start was really un-communicative. Through the project, he built so much confidence, and they developed this really amazing idea for a mental health service for men, by putting QR codes in pubs to encourage men to talk to people about their problems. Through the process, he opened up and talked about losing 4 friends to suicide during covid. The process unlocked this huge transformation.

The creative process opens up neurological pathways. It builds better brains which actually works better for people. It’s not just an art class or something similar. This is a thinking process. But it takes a really engaged teacher because it’s 25 workshops.

And once we can get an engaged teacher, the effects are transformational. Particularly for the kids at the edges, the ones at the back of the class, or that find it hard to make friends.

Scott: What you’re talking about is truly transformative. It’s about unlocking education, but it’s also unlocking life, and unlocking their futures.

It’s really inspiring. But then the first thing I think is – why isn’t this the fundamental approach to learning?

Do you think we should be heading towards a world where that’s the fundamental approach or part of the fundamental approach to learning?

Kim: I’m a designer. I’m not in education. So I’ve always been scared to talk about education. So for me, it’s about, how can we work with the curriculum and enhance it?

They have to try and get as many people through a system, But for us we can come in as an intervention. And at a really great space, which is Transition Year, which gives students that gap. It’s an opportunity, almost for reflection. To glue their wider experience together.

That sounds really strange, but as they go through secondary school, kids schedules get intense, it’s boom, boom, boom! There’s no bleed, no space to make sense of how it all fits together, very few opportunities to use left and right brain in the same class.

This then gives them an opportunity to break out of the silos. It’s communication. It’s presentation. It’s creative thinking, it’s analysis, it’s data, it’s everything. Helping them see the relevance of their skills and knowledge, and how it can be applied in different ways.

Scott: Again, it’s making me think of the systems of education that are set up for that clear, siloed world of work. But then, again, what we’re seeing in the workplace is actually an erosion of those silos in a lot of places. They don’t work anymore. They’re not helpful.

And we see all the time that industry is saying we need graduates from third level education that can navigate laterally as well as in linear subjects.

Kim: Yeah, I really feel for teachers, because, they just can’t do it all. Within those systems, with the workload they have, trying to engage 30 people, 30 different brains that all learn in different styles. And trying to deliver something well. And then trying to get them ready for those sorts of challenges, it’s a lot.

It has to change. It’s a really big ask, but it’s fundamental because students’ brains are shifting because of the amount of screen time they have. Their brains are changing.

How can they absorb the amount of information that is supposed to be in an hour-long class in 2 minutes, because that’s what their brains now are used to absorbing. And then you have the course, and the information that’s been developed for a different era.

65% of future jobs don’t exist yet for the kids that are going into school. We have to get them prepared for the unknown, getting them comfortable in the uncomfortable is a key thing we need to be educating them.

Scott: It highlights the importance of what you described with your own journey, actually letting people see that they can work in different ways. They can think in different ways. There’s value in it. And actually, they can really start to kind of open themselves up.

Surely we’re heading to a world where everybody needs the opportunity to flourish and tap into their strengths? That world where, if you just follow the rules, everything will be fine doesn’t exist any more. So we need that unlocking in every part of life. We need that unlocking and all the things you’re talking about.

Kim: One of the key modules we teach is about learning through failure. We use some great examples and show them about all the failures behind the success because the success is actually last. You have to fail, it’s important to show them that’s absolutely normal because everything’s so glossy. They experience so much through Instagram, which makes everything look like it is perfection straight away. And then that kills absolutely kills confidence.

Scott: Learning through failure, that’s an amazing building block to give someone. What else is in the toolkit that is really critical for providing those building blocks?

Kim: We get a lot of feedback from students and teachers about what lands well, and what doesn’t, but you don’t get the insight into what might be driving more meaningful change.

So we do this thing around proximal observation in the classroom. We ask teachers to tell us about the change that they see in the students. So from the start, maybe being uncommunicative to then leading a team, that type of thing.

And that’s starting to help us understand that the tools or building blocks are really powerful, but it’s as much about being able to meet the students where they are, understand where they’re coming from so that the teachers can get them in the right headspace to get the most out of the tools.

So say, if they’re very active and they’ve just maybe come in from PE and their energies up, we can do an exercise to bring them down a little bit, just to get their minds in the right place. Or if they’re very low, we can help teachers bring the energy up with an activity.

We chatted a little bit about learning abilities and learning styles. So I would be a physical processor and a verbal processor, I like to talk. And I like to figure things out while I’m talking. And I use my hands to work things out too.

So we have free Lego packs for students, we do system thinking exercises in Lego, and that changes the way they have to concentrate, which again opens them up to learning, and also is more inclusive to people that learn in different ways.

A lot of our tools build on this principle, to get them thinking and working in different ways, outside their usual patterns – developing scenarios, defining personas, making maps, to help them empathise and understand other people and situations.

It’s all those tools from the creative sector that we live and breathe every day, but we do it in different ways and make it really relevant to them.

There’s a beautiful project by a guy who built a financial management app for single parents. His Mum was a single parent, and she was stressed to the wall every month about money coming in. And and so he built this financial management tool that gamified savings. So if she saved €10 a week, by the end of the month they could go to the cinema and go out for dinner together.

So it’s like relationship goals, but between them. Through that project, his mum started to see that he was stressed about her being stressed and really wanted to help. So they became more open. They start to talk about finances more and better understand each others needs.

So these building blocks work on a number of levels. And these are skills that can be applied not only to the subjects in the senior cycle but beyond as well. It opens them up to understanding how these subjects connect with real life, and that they have the power to make a difference. All in 25 workshops.

Scott: There’s a very clear theme for me in how you’ve been talking about your work, and how you’ve been using that word – unlocking.

Quite often when we talk about education, particularly in that kind of academic way, it’s like we always talk about it as a feeder for the world of work. And we’ve talked about that earlier, the world is changing, so the relationships between education and work need to change.

What’s interesting in hearing you talk is that every example you’ve given is about how education can unlock positive progress in so many more ways. It’s fundamental to life, to happiness and resilience, to the things that help us have a good life as people, as well as a get good job, as well as find or make better opportunities. And it can glue all those things together in a more healthy way.

Kim: As a society, we’ve had such a focus on commerciality for such a long time. Everything is about the money. But the challenges the future generations are facing means our focus needs to shift to how we live our lives and our impact.

And it’s a tricky balance because money’s important, we need it to live and make progress, but we need to change the dynamic. Even if we can shift it by 10 degrees to a more positive balance, it’s a different world.

We need to shift the priorities, and that’s a fundamental mindset change. So you know, that’s what we are trying to build or help change the way people think through The B!G Idea.

And then maintain that mindset. That’s our next challenge, once we’ve given people the building blocks, how do we get them to keep using them? I don’t have the answer. Yes, but when I have time I’ll figure it out.

Scott: That’s a good next challenge. This has been great, thanks Kim.