OUR PERSON OF THE YEAR:
Isn’t a billionaire
Hasn’t changed the world
Doesn’t have 68m followers
BUT SHE IS:
As committed
As generous
As passionate
And does have the most important job in the world
Like millions like her
WHO WILL HELP US #IGNITE22
Pandora is a teacher.
Like millions of other teachers around the world she changes lives daily, in her particular case in the socially deprived brough of Queens, New York, USA.
No I’ve never met her but I do know she’s as committed, professional, selfless and generous as the millions of teacher like her on the front line around the world who have had the toughest years as covid and politics have ripped communities and countries apart, leaving them to pick up the pieces and be political pawns.
An often thankless job.
Pandora works tirelessly for the chidlren in her care, in and out of school. Just check her timeline - she is a fund raising machine.
So why, with all the amazing teachers in the UK, have I put the spot light on a teacher on the other side of the world, one I’ve never met I hear you ask.
REWIND
Back in March I tweeted a comment about Merck Mercuriades who had generously arranged for one of his associate artists Nile Rodgers to do a video call with me for a school in Liverpool when we ran a week in the city at the end of 2019.
It seemed that Merck had also generously supported a project in Pandora’s school and after seeing that tweet Pandora saw how Sir Ken Robinson has inspired our work too and we arranged for one of our live streamed assemblies to her whole school in Queens, from a cardbaord Coventry Cathedral we’d appeared to build in their school yard.
Have you heard the one about the dad?
After that she told us about a trip a New York dad was about to take which was to change everything for us.
That dad was Jared Isaacman, a technology entrepreneur who had just announced he’d be leading the world’s all civilian space flight, the three day SpaceX inspiration4 Mission.
I saw a video clip on Twitter of the SpaceX Falcon 9 booster rocket being transported across the USA for Jared’s launch and mashed up a video with it announcing our #InspiredToLearn21 Tour and how the Inspiration4 mission had inspired it.
By chance Jared saw that tweet and made a generous contribution to our sponsorship fund (he’d already committed to match fund a $100m donation to a children’s cancer hospital in the US).
We rented a camper van and hit the road. While in my home town of Ludlow, where I’d been asked to be Patron of the Fringe Arts Festival I ran an evening ‘Art of Dads’ event in St Lawrence Parish Church, where I’d been an altar boy as a child.
I was delighted that Homer Hickam - Patron of our Rocket Kids Club and author of the Rocket Boys book that my dad had found and gave me – was able to join us on a video link from NASA’s SpaceCamp in the USA and where he’d that day bumped in to Jared and chatted about STEAM Co.’s work.
Also during the evening, Andrew Onions an old school friend who I’d bumped in to while back in Ludlow, stood up to talk about Elon Musk and his vision to take a million people to Mars in 30 years on a fleet of Starships that would stand taller than the church we were in.
Being the ‘Jack of All Trades, Master of None’ I’d completely missed that and look deeper into it.
I announced our Mission To Mars Autumn Tour, a month travelling around the UK in a camper van which Jared generously agreed to support again.
Coincident with the launch of the Inspiration4 mission in September, that saw me appear on the BBC 6 o’clock news, on radio and in newspapers around the UK to promote STEAM Co.’s own mission:
To Inspire A Million Kids to Aim Higher Than High
Powered by their Creativity and Community
Just before Christmas I announced #OurMillion21 appeal:
To Raise a Million Quids
To Inspire a Million Kids
The plan being to put up to 22 of our Pop-Up Creativity Day Drop Trucks and STEAMsters like me on the road in 2022 and to run festivals, large and small across the UK, to complement at grass roots, the government own £120 National Festival of Creativity and innovation that we’d long wanted to be part of,
The appeal was of course the epic fail I expected it to be with only a handful of pledges, but being between £1 and £50 a month I am not dismayed.
Five years ago, weeks after the Brexit vote, Darren Henley, CEO of Arts Council England visited an area that epitomised our divided country and told the people of Sunderland:
“Let’s ask What If. Let’s Start a Creativity Revolution”
Well this New Year’s Eve and from New Years’ Day I and many of the people with me on the STEAM Co. journey these last five years say:
“Let’s Start…
Let’s Inspire
Let’s Create
Let’s Spark
Let’s Ignite a Creativity Revolution in our Schools, Work and Lives”
After a couple of weeks of covid induced inactivity, STEAM Co. will be spending the first few weeks of January thinking and planning before hitting the road for another UK tour, all the time gathering ideas for a .
And the end of February we’ll hold a live and live streamed co-creation conference to share ideas and inspiration and lay down a timetable and collaborators for a year-long programme of events.
We’ll publish a monthly podcast and live stream weekly #ArtConnects and #RocketKids Club sessions.
So we still need to raise that million and appeal to all Creative Carers, People and Organisations who Care, Care about Creativity, Children and All our Futures to be chip in whatever you can (from £1 a month) to our #CreativeCarer Patreon here.
Hopefully you’ll realsie now what this blog was about – how art connects us, a phrase Seth Godin gave me on New Years Eve seven years ago as you can read here.
And as he said then and here:
It might not work, but here's the thing.
The guy who invented the ship also invented the shipwreck, and either you're in or you're out.
Either you want to play this game or you don't.
Art doesn't work because we did something conventional and predictable, and here it is industrialised, right? Art works because we connected.
I hope you'll think about that as you consider whether you want to get off the plane, whether you are willing to lead, whether you care enough to make art, whether you're willing to connect and it's this, are you going to matter? I hope you will.
Thanks for your attention.
It’s been a tough year, but that covid cloud had silver linings if you were able to look for and find them and I don’t say that glibly.
Here’s withing you and yours a happy, creative and gratfeul New Year and that we will be able to collaborate and o-create together.
Let’s #IGNITE22
