The sessions form part of a much wider piece of work taking place across local schools through My Futures.
The My Futures Gateway provides young people with the opportunity to start exploring their interests through six different pathways. Rather than presenting careers as one huge, overwhelming question — "What do you want to be when you grow up?" — students can begin by identifying broader areas that interest them.
From there, schools can create much more meaningful opportunities around those interests.
That could mean targeted work experience, encounters with employers, or bringing people from industry directly into schools to meet students who already have an interest in their field.
It changes the conversation from simply exposing young people to careers to helping them explore the possibilities that are relevant and exciting to them.
Working with
High Horizons+, students from
Discovery Academy spent two days at
Keele University, followed by students from
Excel Academy the following week.
Every new Year 7 student had the opportunity to visit the university campus.
For many, this was their first experience of being inside a university.
Students arrived at Keele and began their day in a real university lecture theatre, where Mark and the High Horizons+ team introduced them to university life, higher and further education, and some of the different routes their futures could take.
The groups then took part in a range of activities across the campus, including conversations about careers and university alongside practical workshops such as forensic science and sessions delivered by university professionals.
And that's where Wavemaker came in.
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Across four full days, the
Wavemaker team delivered interactive employer workshops exploring careers, digital skills and the skills young people may need in a rapidly changing world.
We started by telling our own stories.
We talked about Wavemaker's journey and more than 11 years of working with communities, organisations and individuals to help people build confidence and skills through technology.
We also shared our personal journeys, including Ben & Samantha's Career choices. With Ben studying Fine Art at university before eventually co-founding Wavemaker, and Samantha choosing not to go to University, becoming self-employed for 11 years before joining the Wavemaker team.
One of the messages we wanted students to take away was simple:
Careers don't always follow a straight line.
To demonstrate that, we got everyone on their feet for a giant game of binary Heads or Tails.
Around 40 students at a time had to make a choice. Heads or tails. Stay standing if you're right. Sit down if you're wrong.
Eventually, one winner remained.
It was simple, noisy and great fun, but it opened up a much bigger conversation about uncertainty.
None of us can predict exactly what jobs will exist in 10, 20 or 30 years time.
Technology will change.
Industries will change.
Opportunities will appear that we haven't even imagined yet.
So rather than trying to predict everything, we talked about developing what we sometimes call our human superpowers: creative thinking, questioning, reasoning, communication, resilience, adaptability and, perhaps most importantly, being willing to have a go.
The main challenge of our workshop was
Wavemaker's Beat the Scammer Online Digital Escape Room.
Working in teams, students tackled a series of browser-based challenges designed around online scams, phishing and digital awareness.
But solving the escape room required much more than digital knowledge.
Teams had to listen to one another, communicate effectively, solve problems, question information and work together under pressure to crack the final code and beat the scammer.
And, of course, there was a prize for the team that completed the challenge fastest with the highest score!
It created some fantastic conversations. No two sessions were quite the same, and watching groups find their own ways of tackling the challenges was one of the highlights of the four days.
We finished every workshop with one final question:
What skill do you think you're going to need in the future?
The answers were different every time.
And perhaps that's the point.
These young people don't need to have their careers mapped out at 11 years old. What they can start doing is discovering what interests them, understanding the possibilities available to them and building the confidence and transferable skills that will help them respond to whatever comes next.
For Wavemaker, the four days also felt like something of a return to our roots.
Working directly with school-age young people was a huge part of our early work, and these sessions reminded us just how much energy, creativity and curiosity comes from working with young people.
It also reinforced something we've believed for a long time: digital education isn't simply about teaching people how to use technology.
It's about helping people become confident thinkers, problem-solvers, communicators and creators who can navigate a world increasingly shaped by technology.
A huge thank you to the High Horizons+ team at Keele University, Discovery Academy and Excel Academy for inviting us to play a part.
We're excited to see where the My Futures journey goes next — and how Wavemaker can continue to support schools, trusts and young people to develop the digital and human skills they'll need for whatever their future holds.
Want to know more about our work with schools, digital skills, careers and interactive learning? Get in touch with Wavemaker.
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