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On the morning of the 9^th November 2022, a group of thirty or so inspirational people – and a few members of the Lightbulb team too! – spiralled up the sleek stairway of the Design Museum for a photo-call.

The snapshot marked the end of a humbling morning for Lightbulb: that of our annual get-together. This year, it took place right in the heart of West London, inside an awe-inspiring venue (the museum’s Creative Workshop, to be precise). The Design Museum is somewhere to which we feel very close – not least geographically, as it is bang in the centre of the community within which we do so much work.

The event is always a highlight of our year. We love seeing so many friendly-faces and like-minds in person. It is a very precious coming-together, a gathering of the brightest sparks, all powered by a common cause: to make a difference by changing lives for the better.

We reiterated that morning – and do so again here – how very honoured we are at Lightbulb to help empower those initiatives. We love supporting our partners’ brilliant endeavours in whatever ways we can (financial and via our networks), and so bringing such brilliant change-makers together for a forum in which they can exchange notes and ideas is very special indeed.

Tim Marlow, Director of The Design Museum, spoke inspiringly that day about the way the museum works within the community – including via the Growing Together Garden project, on which Lightbulb has partnered. Tim explained how design informs every aspect of our lives.

Design had been on our minds in November. We had just put the finishing touches to our Theory of Change graphic. Working with expert Jami Dixon on this articulation of our ethos was another highlight of 2022. The process was instructive, inspiring and – as you might hope with Lightbulb – illuminating too. The abiding goal for Lightbulb’s work – we decided – is to fashion as best we can ‘more opportunities for marginalised communities, resulting in increased life-chances and reduced inequality’.

We would, later during December, follow-up by introducing Jami to various partners via an online workshop. She is a brilliant new ally and one with whom we hope to work closely together into the future.

As well as celebrating the work of our partners, our annual breakfast – coming as it does toward the end of each year – also prompts us to review our own work during the preceding months:

How the Greenlight Project goes from strength to strength, supporting marginalised communities through the arts.

How our Integration Challenge forges bold new connections via dream-team partnerships: this year, including between West London Zone and Nova; Football Beyond Borders and The Design Museum; Steppaz and Curious School of Puppetry.

How our alliance with the formidable team at Analysis Group has paid yet more dividends by enhancing partners’ methodologies, enabling them to chart their impact with greater accuracy.

It also prompts a stock-take of our own ongoing impact:

Since our inception in 2019, Lightbulb has made 47 grants and 5 impact investments…

To the tune of £1,300,000…

Working with 44 different organisations…

With the cost-of-living crisis severely impacting vulnerable and underserved populations across the UK, we made our grants more flexible and doubled down on the pro bono support provided to our non-profit partners to help amplify their impact. 

During the last financial year (2020/21), our partners impacted tens of thousands of people. We hesitate to put a precise figure on this, as that impact varied from light-touch to deeper interventions, from grass-roots community projects to more disruptive ed-tech enterprises.

We at Lightbulb continue to bask in the reflected luminosity of our partners’ achievements. We are truly humbled by that common cause – to make a change. We remain resolved, as another year dawns, to keep doing all we can to help. 

It was with great excitement, despite lifelong loyalties at Lightbulb to another Premier League club in North London, that we recently headed to Tottenham Hotspur’s stadium for the launch of Football Beyond Borders’ policy report THERAPISTS IN TRACKSUITS.

The launch was part of the Annual Showcase from FBB, an inspiring yearly get-together to celebrate the charity’s recent achievements and hear their future plans. The stadium was buzzing on arrival, prior to the big event’s kick off, as kids and coaches, supporters and practitioners, all came together in N17. FBB’s methods combine therapeutic practises with sporting strategies in order to help young people who have become disengaged from school life fulfil their potential. FBB helps more than 1,500 such kids in the classroom, on the pitch, and beyond.

The Lightbulb Trust is very proud to have supported the first major policy review from FBB, compiled by their Head of Policy, Joe Watfa.

With the spectacular floodlit arena ranged behind him, Joe explained to a packed audience of stakeholders – with the help of two equally impressive FBB kids and their coach – how he visited schools throughout the country asking young people various questions but one most specifically: if you could deliver a message to the Minister for Education explaining what young people need to thrive in school, what would that be? 

The replies were varied and revealing, but also contained sufficiently strong patterns of response for clear findings to emerge. These have now been published in Joe’s final report. The finished article represents a clarion-call for more enlightened, upstream interventions that are young-person centred and holistic in approach. This is all in line with FBB’s ethos, which Lightbulb wholeheartedly endorses.

Joe has consulted far and wide, most notably with the young people his report champions. The resulting document charts not only his research’s key takeaways but also, moreover, offers joined-up policy recommendations that can – and, in our view, should – be implemented into educational frameworks on more widescale footings.

To read more, including the report itself, visit: https://www.footballbeyondborders.org/news/therapists-in-tracksuits

At first glance, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is a picture of wealth and prosperity, with an economy ranking among the top 10% of UK local authorities in the recently published UK Prosperity Index.

However, these economic headlines mask significant variations in outcomes between different communities in the borough.

The Kensington + Chelsea Foundation commissioned WPI Economics to analyse long-standing issues of poverty and inequality in the borough, including any recent impact from the Covid-19 pandemic.

The report shows that, beneath strong economic performance, Kensington and Chelsea is a highly unequal borough, with some residents suffering from severe deprivation. One in four children (24.4%) were living in poverty in 2019/20 and the borough has the highest permanent exclusion rate in London.

Download the full report here.

The Social Mobility Comission released its annual State of the Nation report that unveils in detail the devastating impact of COVID-19 on the UK’s four nations.

According to the report, progress made in the last decade on closing the attainment gap in schools has been lost. Even before COVID-19, pupils who have spent 80% of their schooling in poverty were a shocking 22.7 months behind non-disadvantaged pupils on average.

The reports highlights that child poverty plays a significant role in limiting social mobility and asks the government to focus on reducing it as one of the most influential and cost effective policy actions it could take to improve social mobility across society.

Read the full report here.

Through the DevicesDotNow initiative, the Lightbulb Trust and the Good Things Foundation have donated 25 tablet devices to ACDA Skills Training. The tablets with connectivity were given out to vulnerable and disadvantaged individuals.

ACDA Skills Training worked closely with a number of services to help identify individuals who – like Hanane on the picture above – were eligible and who would benefit from having access to a device with internet connection. The devices were configured with the appropriate settings and apps ready for use, including information about who to contact for support and how to access Good Things Foundation’s Learn My Way programme.

Learn more about ACDA Skills on their Twitter account.

The Lightbulb Trust supported Harrow Club’s emergency fundraising appeal to buy 34 new laptops to be used by the vulnerable children and young people they work with.  Due to challenging home situations, they are unable to complete any online learning at home. According to Michael Defoe, Harrow Club’s CEO, over the last week they have also identified a further 36 young people in households where many siblings are sharing one device, making home learning virtually impossible.    One young person talked about his situation: “I come from a big family and we share a 3-bedroom flat. We have one tablet that I have to share with my sisters and we all need to be online at the same time. I’m using my phone when I can to join lessons…but I can’t see the work …so I don’t do it… I’m finding it really hard, I’m bored all the time, and getting in trouble.  If I had a laptop I would share it with (one of) my sisters.” The Harrow Club is looking to raise funds for an additional 36 laptops, which would be loaned out to these families, and are welcoming any contributions from the public. They are also accepting donations of used laptops to be loaned to young people. Donate funds to Harrow Club’s laptop appeal here. If you are interested in donating laptops, please contact Harrow Club’s COO, Ros Oxley, at ros@harrowclubw10.org.

Liz Williams MBE, Chief Executive of FutureDotNow, discusses the crisis and how it can be tackled.

According to Liz Williams, the UK is in a digital skills crisis. Over half of the UK’s workforce (17.1 million) lack workplace digital skills and 11.7 million (22%) adults are without the essential digital skills needed for everyday life, according to the Lloyds Bank UK Consumer Digital Index 2020. These figures have remained stubbornly consistent for years. Perhaps not so surprising when only 23% of the UK workforce report having had any digital skills training from their employer.

During the first national lockdown in 2020, the Lightbulb Trust worked with the FutureDotNow coalition and the Good Things Foundation to provide devices and digital skills support to some of the most vulnerable families in London. Liz argues that, “as society moves more and more online, the sheer speed of digitisation is leaving many behind. This is damaging the UK’s competitiveness and productivity and preventing individuals and businesses taking full advantage of digital technology. The UK might have a thriving tech sector but all businesses now require some digital expertise. And yet, over half the UK’s workforce is not equipped with the digital skills they need”.

Read the full blog post here.

Apps for Good have partnered with Lightbulb Trust to prototype a new way for young people to engage with industry volunteers.

Lightbulb Trust funding will enable Apps for Good to design, build and test a new Expert Feedback Tool.

Students taking an Apps for Good course will be able to post their work to our new platform at three points during the course. Industry expert volunteers will log-in and give written feedback on their ideation, wireframing and final design. The tool is designed to be flexible for volunteers. They can give feedback at any point in the week after the young person posts their work. In their next class, students will view their feedback, discuss it with a teacher, and further develop their Tech for Good product.

After announcing their support for the new project Salome and Ben Holden, founders and trustees at Lightbulb Trust, said:

“Apps for Good’s vision aligns with Lightbulb’s mission to empower children and young people through inclusive learning. The ramifications of Covid-19 upon children and educators have led to organisations with programmes that holistically join up digital and in-person learning such as Apps for Good becoming more relevant than ever.

The way Apps for Good inspires young people to use technology in order to figure out ingenious ideas that help others – in the process, enhancing the participants’ own learning curves and life skills – is itself inspirational and ingenious. We are proud to support their ongoing innovations.”

Read the full article here. To find out more about the new tool please contact experts@appsforgood.org.