This is a guest post by Themis Gkion, who leads the Hive Athens team.

“If children have interest, then education happens”

[Sir Arthur C. Clarke]

Inspiring and motivating youth is probably one of the biggest challenges in education. Some claim that formal education systems are outdated, because they appear slow to adapt to the swiftly changing needs of youth to cultivate 21st century skills.

We believe that learning is not confined in space (i.e. schools) or in time (i.e. the age group of students). Learning can happen anywhere and anytime.

We are convinced that a lot of inspiring teams and individuals engage in creative learning projects. Several of these good practices still have limited outreach; they are not connected; a small community only knows about them. They are like remote islands in an archipelago.  Informal learning projects are harder to reach because they are not centrally monitored by an organization such as the ministry of education.

But how can we map this fragmented potential? How can we surface these projects?

This is one of the key issues the Hive Athens team had to address once we set out to organize a Hive Pop-Up Event and assess the potential for a local Hive Learning Network. A tool that came in handy at this early stage was the Challenge.

The Challenge is a competition we co-organized through TEDxAthens in 2011, reaching out for worthwhile projects from all aspects of learning in Greece. It proved to be a powerful mapping tool, providing us with valuable conclusions and insights.

We were looking for education projects that inspire, projects that motivate, projects that can act as best practice case studies to follow or to apply in different contexts, projects that foster values such as collaboration and volunteering; good practices from all aspects and forms of learning, ranging from formal and informal education practices, to life-long or skill-based learning; inspiring initiatives by individuals, groups of individuals or not-for-profit organizations.

We wanted to understand what different people perceive as meaningful and valuable learning experiences.

Our goal was to source and support the growth and networking of disruptive learning projects, so that they can have a meaningful impact in our society.

A few words about the process and the outcome

Applications for the Challenge were submitted online for six weeks. They could be submitted by people involved in each initiative, as well as by third parties.

We spread the word through the organizer’s social media accounts, web portals, blogs, radio, teachers’ networks and word of mouth. We deployed various media in order to reach out to diverse communities.

We were initially expecting 30 to 50 submissions. We accumulated 153, exceeding by far our most optimistic expectations. We were blown away, not only by the number, but also by the quality, the ingenuity and the breadth of the projects. We received applications from all over Greece, including remote mountain villages and islands. Students, actors, engineers, writers, documentary directors, teachers, doctors, schools, and NGOs submitted projects. Age ranged from 12 to over 70. All 153 projects are still published at the Challenge website. The site is in Greek, since this was a local project.

We evaluated these initiatives according to specific criteria set in advance. The most important was their potential for a significant, positive impact in our society. We were looking for inspiring initiatives that can either grow themselves, or act as a best practice case study to be applied across different disciplines and environments. We preferred collaborative projects. We also evaluated the pedagogical value for the people directly involved in the projects. Eligible initiatives were at the implementation stage, no matter how early in that stage.

The organizing team narrowed down the selection to the 10 most promising initiatives, during the first evaluation stage.

Public online voting and further evaluation by a committee of judges narrowed down the selection to the three finalists.

Each of the three finalists offered a 5-minute presentation during the TEDxAthens conference. The 1200 conference attendees then casted ballots and decided that the Challenge winner would be UrbanDig Project.

This concluded the competition, but it was only the beginning of a new journey.

A few words about UrbanDig Project, the winner

The UrbanDig project (“Excavating ghosts of culture in the modern city”) sheds light on areas of recent urban cultural history. It re-introduces the citizens to their city. Coming from the metropolis of Athens, which is full of archeological excavations, the project explores sites associated with less known or salient artists and writers of recent history. It stages site-specific theatrical, dance, music and visual performances that adopt a modern perspective on each site and its history, thereby developing the connecting fabric between the cultural work of yesterday and the cultural work of tomorrow.

During their recent performance, they collaborated with another four initiatives to convert an old building in a fairy tale creative space for ethnic minority children.

A few words about Athens Plaython, the runner-up

Athens Plaython is a new group that brings to the city a marathon of big urban games, played on the streets, walls and squares of Athens. During 2012 they are hosted a series of art, game design and electronics workshops for kids and adults who want to learn how to design games for their own city, and culminated to a big festival in September 2012. Their goal is to introduce a platform for the community to come together through playing, interacting and learning. They are proposing a lifestyle infused and surrounded by playfulness as a means to improve everyday encounters and urban experiences.

Conclusions and insights

We wanted to explore the vast field of learning, by maintaining an open attitude and we received fresh ideas and surprising projects.

The most valuable outcome was not directly related to the competition itself. It had to do with raising awareness about a wide variety of disruptive learning projects, surfacing their hidden learning potential. It was about all the connections and collaborations that emerged.

The response by the community was significant. The Challenge finalist projects received several offers for free office space, website development, coaching, mentoring and other forms of voluntary work. The community and the broader society engaged in creative dialogue throughout the year.

The community crowd-sourced creative, disruptive projects; participated in evaluating them; continually supports them.

We now have a wealth of information about a wide variety of disruptive education projects, some of which could become the early adopters in developing a Hive Learning Network in Athens.