“We can’t predict the future, the opportunities and challenges it will hold, but we do know for certain that our children will have to live there and we want them to thrive.”

Gareth Binns, Chief Executive, Institute of Imagination

Hosting Lab Learn: Future Me at Second Home

This week, we’ve been connecting primary schools local to our offices to our neighbouring businesses, to give children a taste of how different industries are rapidly evolving and how offices are becoming more flexible, to keep up with the pace of change.

Schoolchildren from Bonner Primary School and John Scurr Primary School joined us for a Lab Learn workshop at Second Home, the creative shared workspace in Spitalfields where the iOi office is based.

The theme of the visit was ‘Future Me’, where children explored future careers and the skills they might need through activities such as coding with  Micro:bit and tinkering with wearable tech.

Connecting to local businesses 

We were delighted to work with EYX, also based in Second Home, who hosted a Disruption Bootcamp for the children. As the name suggests, children were able to get hands-on with some new technology that’s ‘disrupting’ workplaces, such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Augmented Reality (AR), as part of a wider discussion around the future of work, skills and changing technologies. The discussion challenged children to think about questions such as:

• What is disruption and is it important?
• What are some examples of disruption?
• What can we learn from disruptive technologies?
• What do I feel excited or scared about?
• How will disruption be relevant for me?

Experimenting with augmented reality, children drew their own A5 postcards and used the HP Reveal app to overlay augmented reality content onto their drawings. They took these creations home afterwards to share with each other, their teachers and parents. Children also got stuck into using virtual reality by co-creating a virtual world using the CoSpaces Edu platform, adding environments, characters and animations before viewing these new worlds through VR headsets. Last but not least, children helped to train an AI machine by playing games of ‘noughts and crosses’ on the ‘ML for Kids’ platform, whilst speaking with EYX about how the AI machine can use this data to learn and improve.

“It was great to give the children a chance to get hands-on with the kind of technology few, if any of them have encountered before.  They were thoroughly engaged in all the sessions we ran and asked a number of surprisingly thought provoking questions, such as “What happens when robots go bad?” We loved their enthusiasm and hope they’ve gone away with a greater understanding of the technologies disrupting the world around them, and how things like Artificial Intelligence and Virtual Reality will shape their future.”

Alfie Brazier, Session Facilitator, EYX

Why Second Home?

Now with workspaces across London, Lisbon and Los Angeles, Second Home embodies and supports the idea that workplace environments need to change and adapt. Designed for creative companies and entrepreneurs, Second Home challenges the idea that offices have to be boring and bland. Bringing children into this creative environment helped demonstrate the way workplaces are adapting to new generations of businesses and how spaces can nurture creativity. Co-founder of Second Home, Rohan Silva, shared this brilliant article on how we can nurture children’s creativity in order to ‘beat the robots’ as part of our Imagination Matters campaign.

How can you get involved?

Find out more about our upcoming events for schools and families on our events calendar.