Mapplewells Primary and Nursery School in Sutton in Ashfield, Notthinghamshire, recently took part in the no limits primary enterprise project…and produced some fantastic results!

Deciding to run their project during their Enterprise Week, the school, along with no limits facilitator Ben Lumley, set the pupils the challenge of coming up with an idea for a product and service that they could sell at the school’s summer fair. Having a morning with Ben the week before Enterprise Week, the pupils (including the nursery children!!!) eagerly set to work coming up with their ideas before choosing the product or service that they would sell.

During Enterprise Week, the classes worked brilliantly to design and make their products and services, even sourcing support from home and local businesses. The staff were amazed at the resourcefulness of their students and were thoroughly impressed with what they produced.

On the Friday morning before the fair, representatives from each class took part in a trade fair in the school hall where invited Judges were given the opportunity to see what would be sold later on that day, and also to ask questions about how well the classes had worked and what challenges they had faced. The VIP judges decided that there would be a winner for best idea, as well as a winner for the class who made the most money at the summer fair. After much discussion, the best idea award was given to Year 1, whose Mad Hats (an exclusive range of individually styled and unique hats) was so good that it deserved to take the top prize.

The classes then emerged onto the school field in the afternoon to sell their products or services, and an awards morning was held during the follow week to celebrate everyone’s achievements and to announce the winners.
All of the classes did superbly well, with every team raising at least £80! However, the class that stood out above the rest by raising a staggering £285 was Year 4, who held a raffle and put on a talent show.

Everyone involved, both from the school and from no limits, were blown away by how well all of the classes got on.

On Friday 25th June 2010, 100 Gift and Talented students from around Leicestershire attended a Movie Moguls themed Enterprise Day run by the folks from no limits at Leicester University. The Yr 7 and 8 pupils, from 9 schools in the Leicestershire area ,were given the challenge of coming up with a new idea for a movie that would appeal to a wide range of young people.

The day, run by no limits, kicked off with a fun and lively icebreaker session where all of the students were mixed up with each other to complete teambuilding and creative thinking exercises. All of the students eagerly got involved right from the off, and it wasn’t long before the energy in the room started to build. This was a fantastic way of building some early group cohesion that everyone could carry through the rest of the day.

When everyone had their brains working, the no limits team introduced their enterprise challenge for the day. The groups were required to generate their ideas for plots, genres, characters, location and potential dramatic twists before deciding on a final movie idea to work with. Spending the rest of the day to work on the idea, with help from student ambassadors from the University, the groups produced story boards for the plot and key scenes, a short movie trailer on the simple, but very effective, Window Movie Maker, as well as a raft of advertising materials and merchandising.

By the end of the day the students, many of whom had never met each other before the beginning of the day, were ready to present their ideas to an assembled panel of Movie Moguls as well as the other students, parents and family members in the new Fielding Johnson Lecture Theatre (pictured below). All of the 10 groups gave spirited and humorous presentations to sell their ideas to our Movie Moguls, who were so impressed that they remarked that many adults couldn’t have presented so well, and in front of so many people.

But there could only be one winner. After much deliberation, the Judges decided that the winning film was “The Unfinished Chapter”, the story of a boy who has to save the world from a deadly secret through books and his imagination.

Congratulations to everyone who attended and who put so much hard work in on the day!

So, why has Enterprise Week got all grown up and gone global? Not sure, but it makes sense to me. Our lives are increasingly influenced by global phenomenon. ‘Think global, act local’ is crystallised around the interdependency of our economies, our environment, and the power of global communication. The pace of change, global interconnectivity and the global challenges we face create a unique time.

This unique time needs enterprising people! Positive, ‘can do’ people with a growth mind-set: creative thinkers who find solutions and think and act quickly. It is vital that our young people learn to be enterprising – to see, create, develop and make the most of opportunities and rise to the challenge of change.

I see striking examples of young people’s enterprise all the time, and Global Entrepreneurship Week is a fantastic showcase of talent and potential.

Our LEO Enterprise Oscars was a glittering occasion involving 12 schools; a fantastic celebration of young peoples’ enterprise and hard work over the past six months. Young people, parents, school staff and “the great and the good” came together to celebrate great ideas, talent and achievement. The excitement and energy in the room was palpable and the films of student’s work testament to how enterprising young people can be given the opportunity and the guidance.

But that’s just some young people in some places!

What is our challenge as educators?

Our challenge is to ensure all young people get the opportunity to develop their enterprise capability to help them secure their future personal, social and economic well-being. If young people leave school lacking enterprise capability, we have failed to prepare them effectively for the world they’re going into.

How can we do this?

Now that’s too big a question to answer in one article, but in summary it means:

-       recognising the interconnectivity between the individual and the wider world. Just as we recognise the economic and environmental global interconnectivity, we need to join the dots more effectively between individuals and their immediate and wider community;

-       replacing the tunnel vision of immediate tasks, demands and curriculum content with more of a helicopter view that joins the dots between the different aspects of an individual’s world;

-       recognising, valuing and systematically developing the capabilities an individual needs to achieve personally, socially and economically;

-       making the curriculum more relevant and focused on developing capabilities and competencies rather than just being content-focused.

This doesn’t mean ditching everything we do, but rather doing things differently – facilitating learning more than teaching – teaching English in a way that also develops enterprise capability. As the song says; “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it!”

Teaching in an enterprising way is also good quality teaching!

The planning and reality of a real social enterprise project at Djanogly City Academy, Nottingham.

(find out more in our enterprise section)