The Ideas Incubator is currently closed

We are particularly keen on receiving ideas that:

• stimulate significant debate about the future direction of education and technology
• push the current boundaries of how technology is used
• challenge our assumptions about how teaching and learning happen.

We are particularly looking for ideas that can be modelled, but we may also be interested in future-focused ideas that might not necessarily contain present-day technologies.

Why send us your idea?

We can help you move your idea forwards and closer to becoming a reality – and we can help to showcase it to the education and technology sectors using events and the media. We have an experienced team of experts who are skilled in developing ideas and prototypes, and in collaborating on projects. We can provide funding to cover the development costs of making your idea a reality, as well as evidence-based research to support your idea. We will partner with you and support you in the best way we can to help you realise your project.

If you are successful, we will invest both funding and the time and effort of the Futurelab team into your project to help develop it further and to showcase it to the outside world - plus we’ll bring in other external experts or broker partnerships where needed. Work is carried out in partnership with you, the originator of the idea, and also with learners, the end users. This is key to the way we work.

Who can apply?

Whatever your background, whether you are applying as an individual, as a school or university, or as a company, we welcome all idea submissions from anyone within the UK. We work with a diverse range of people and we can provide you with skills and support to fill any gaps in skills and knowledge to take your idea forward: for example, a games developer may need learning research and children's input, a teacher may need assistance with design or programming skills to bring an idea to reality, or a young learner may need guidance developing their idea into a concrete proposal. We particularly welcome ideas from young people, whether in formal education or not.

Please see our projects section for an idea of projects we've been involved with.

What's on offer

The main contributions we can make to your project are:

1. Expertise
The expertise of our staff to work in collaboration with you. We are experienced in developing ideas; our main areas of expertise are learning research, creativity, technology, user-centred design, project management, fundraising and communications.

2. Funding
From a few thousand pounds upwards to help cover the costs of developing and showcasing your idea. We are looking to fund a range of projects, from very small ones to larger ones.

Note: we don't fund projects with cash-only investments, we are looking to work with you as part of a collaborative team.

3. Research
Our learning research team will explore the general field relevant to your idea and support the project by exploring the context further. We usually conduct pilot research and write reports for publication on our website. These reports capture the general context, document the development of the project and give an overview of the challenges and possibilities the technology or approach offers to learning.

4. Partnership matching with others
We are well connected with other industries (eg learning, academia, games development, new media, technology), all of which have a contribution to make to the arena of learning with new technologies. Where appropriate, and always respecting intellectual property ownership, third-party partners will be brought in to enhance projects.

5. Publicity
We are looking to stimulate debate and discussion around innovation in education, and may wish to organise events, publications and publicity around the ideas submitted, but will always seek your permission first. We will also showcase many of the projects and ideas that we help to develop (unless you've told us to keep it confidential) at conferences, events, and in meetings. We usually also publish our research findings at the end of the project.

How do we work?

We are excited about trying out new ideas, developing them, challenging them, refining them and trying them out with users (your toughest critics) to make them the best that they can be.

Once your idea has been selected by the panel, the idea will be developed collaboratively, evaluated and researched as it progresses using the input of children/learners and 'critical friends'. It's not expected that all projects will make successful new approaches to learning (you'll never know until you try it), but that lessons learnt in the process of trying to make them will be valuable for everyone involved.

We will recognise and respect your intellectual property (IP) and, in the event of your idea being taken on by Futurelab, the relationship between us, inputs, outputs, time-frames and ownership aspects will be negotiated and agreed formally with you. You will retain the IP to your idea, and have the right to use everything we develop for you on the project. While we're not a commercial organisation, where projects have commercial potential, we would expect to negotiate a royalty with you based on the level of our contribution to the development of the idea.

top of page