STEP 1: Let Us Know & Book Your DFC Coach

Please contact us to let us know that you would like to take part.

We will offer you the opportunity to book a date for a DFC Coach to visit your school to work with your teachers on getting started with Design for Change. (Subject to availability)

STEP 2: Get your DFC Toolkit

Once you have let us know that you are taking part, we will send you a Design for Change Toolkit which is a A2 poster setting out the DFC Design Process and some Guidelines. 

You can download a PDF version HERE.

STEP 3: Follow The DFC Design Process

Get a small group of children together and coach them through the Design for Change process. The most important aspect of design for Change is that we elicit children's ideas and resist the temptation to impose our own. By asking questions and working with the answers we get, we can really give the children an opportunity express their own voice - and put their own ideas into action.

The Design for Change steps are:

FEEL THE CHANGE

What would you most like to create or change in your community?
An idea that could touch or affect the lives of many
An idea that YOU can make happen 

IMAGINE THE CHANGE

Talk together about how you can create this change
Get others in your community involved
Plan how and when you will make this Act of Change happen 

DO THE CHANGE

Gather the resources that you will need
Go out and make it happen
Record what you do, the impact you have and how it makes you feel 

SHARE THE CHANGE

Celebrate your Act of Change with your community
Document YOUR STORY and how you have shared it
Upload your project and documentation to us at Design for Change 

SUSTAIN THE CHANGE

Reflect back on your Act of Change and what worked well
Do you feel the story has only just begun?
NOW what are you going to do next?!

Download DFC Toolkit HERE

What should our submission contain?

Informal Progress Updates:

Please feel free to add news, photos, rough-cut videos of your project in progress to The Design for Change Facebook Page HERE

Please encourage teachers, parents and children to keep an eye on what everyone is doing on Facebook (subject to your school policy on Facebook.)

When your project is complete please make your formal submission.

Formal Submission:

1. The DFC Submission Form. This is how you SHARE your story with us about the FEEL, IMAGINE and DO sages of your project, and it forms an important part of your submission. DOWNLOAD HERE.
2. Photographs of the whole DFC Journey, uploaded to FLICKR.
3. Video of the whole DFC Journey uploaded to YouTube.

Important. Check that you have received an email from the DFC Team confirming that we have received your Submission Form.

Coaching Tips for Teachers

PROJECT TIPS

The project is about making our children believe that CHANGE is POSSIBLE and that they can BE THE CHANGE.

Inspire the students and make them see that changing lives can be meaningful & fun and that through this process they can 'be the change'.

As your children to engage with people and real issues that effect them directly - no matter how simple they may seem!

Let your children decide the project - elicit it from them rather than feed it to them! ("Give someone a fish and you feed them for a day. Teach someone to fish and you feed them for a lifetime!")

Help your children think beyond the “first answer” (the most obvious solution) and guide them to include as many of their school mates in the act of creating change. (NB: Help - don't suggest!)

Help your children to think of change beyond ‘raising money’.

Help your children to document the process and record the number of people affected by the change. Children love making videos and most have easy access to simple video editing. Seeing their project on YouTube will be inspirational and rewarding.

COACHING TIPS

• ASK - DON'T TELL! 
• Create an environment where children can 'create' playfully and chaotically - DFC is not just another lesson!
• Some people need to sit quietly to use their imaginations, some need to be physical, noisy, energetic and just a little bit crazy! How can everyone get what they need?
• Listen silently and deeply.
• Enthuse about ALL ideas however ambitious or whacky! 
• All ideas are good because they are part of the creative process.
• Unworkable ideas will evaporate of their own accord.
• Imagination is quickly silenced if people are worried about getting things "right".

Project Timeline

September 2010

Schools commit to take part in the project.

DFC Coaches allocated to schools if required.

Projects begin.

Monday 29th November 2010

Deadline for the Submission form and documentation of your project

Friday, 15th December 2010 

Notification of Awards

Friday, 14th January 2011

Awards Ceremony in London

How does the contest support our Curriculum priorities?

Asking you to take part this year is a BIG ASK and we need to make sure it does more than just give you a sense of satisfaction and fulfilment. Your participation will enable you to meet current priorities in tangible ways.

We believe that Design For Change will:

• really empower your children and build their self-esteem and confidence
• fit well with the current agenda of "pupil voice" in schools
• meets some of the key aims in terms of developing thinking skills, problem solving and lifelong learning
• meets some of the aims of the Government’s current agenda of "narrowing the gap" in terms of the trail of underachievement
• Community cohesion and global citizenship are both key areas of a school's role now, and OFSTED inspects on these activities. This project clearly links to all of this and does so in a very simple and effective way. 

Judging Criteria

We will be looking for ideas that have the:

1. Potential to benefit a large number of people. 
2. Potential to look at an existing problem with a fresh perspective.
3. Potential to not only see change in others lives, but in the lives of the students doing it.