Festival of Inspiration and Enterprise

The inaugural Festival of Inspiration and Enterprise was a fun, upbeat, experiential event designed to inspire attendees to think about “careers” and livelihood in a positive, empowering, insightful, and future-focused way. The event enabled discovery, promoted self-awareness and reflection, and introduced new ideas about ways to make a living which is both fulfilling and in alignment with personal values.

The festival-vibe event was hosted both in and outdoors and included music and food. Over the course of the day pupils moved through a carousel of activities, including lectures, interactive sessions and a careers festival.

Outside in the quad there was a main stage which featured talks and manned stalls with interactive activities hosted by professionals from BBC Broadcasting, Sony and Lending Works (to name but a few). Each stall was aligned to one or more of the following festival zones: Creative Industries, Enterprise, Environment & Sustainability, Social Impact, Technology and Wellbeing.

Amongst the professionals we were pleased to welcome back Alumni Sam Akinwumi (Cribb’s 2014), Nigel Godfrey (Spurgeon’s 1982), Alice Moxley (Roper's 2009), Oliver Brenman (Browns 2013)  and Ben Tinkler-Davies (Tyson’s 2016) who hosted stalls and/ or interactive sessions with our pupils.

We were also pleased to welcome some Year 12s from Charter School North Dulwich, who along with our own pupils who attended learned about enterprise, entrepreneurship, and the growing popularity of portfolio careers. They also discovered emerging job roles and industries which are having a positive impact on the world and had an opportunity to connect with fascinating professionals to learn from them and help develop their networking skills.

Pupils also learnt about the significant control they have in their own career especially through understanding of personal brand and recognised the power of content creation in confidence building and career development, through creating long form content including blogging, podcasting and YouTube.

Middle and Upper School Pupils sessions included:

• A virtual future
• Making Beeswax wraps
• Building a Brand
• Code to grow
• Content Creators - making a job out of having fun!
• How might we use business ideas to help solve societal problems?
• How to Remain Authentic
• Innovation – taking a product to market
• Life lessons from psychology, yoga, and mindfulness
• Marine biology isn't just for marine biologists
• PR and Product Launch
• Pros and Cons of a job in content creation and social media
• Pursuing and sustaining a career in the arts
• Steelpan workshop
• Sustainable corporate travel
• Taster Session - working on a real-life media brief
• The wonder words - The secret to more confidence, happiness, and success
• Doodleledo - live drawing
• T-shirt printing

In the Lower School pupils took part in the ‘8 Billion Ideas’ project which involved them identifying an environmental problem, thinking of a solution for it, creating a Mission Statement and designing a prototype.

Many thanks to all our staff, professional contributors and pupils for their participation on the day, we hope pupils left feeling buoyed at the possibilities and prospects out there for their future careers. Our second Festival of Inspiration and Enterprise is due to take place in the summer term of 2023. Please contact [email protected] if you would like to enquire about getting involved.