News From The Districts

27 Nov 2009
by Flanders District of Creativity

MyMachine: small dreams, big ideas wins another award

MyMachine – 2009: Winner of the United Nations World Summit Award 2009 for Creativity and e-Content, winner of the Design Management Europe Award 2009, selected as the best Bridge project between Education and Economy by the Flemish Government 2008, selected as Education Project of the Year 2009 by the Chamber of Commerce West-Flanders, winner of the UNIZO award for most Entrepreneurial Higher Education (HOWEST) 2009.

MyMachine is a simple, yet very inspiring concept.
We ask primary schools pupils (in Belgium aged 6 to 12 years) to invent their dream machine (the IDEA). Anything goes: a machine to spread chocolate pasta on your bread, to a machine that will help you clean up your room. The only criterion is that the child really, really wants it.
In the next phase higher education engineering students (product designers) from Howest University (aged 18-23 years) design one or more solutions (the CONCEPT). The best solutions then are selected by the children and a professional jury.
In the third phase the technical drawings and working concepts are sent to several technical middle and high schools. The pupils, aged 12-18 years, then build the real working machines (the MACHINE).
During this process the children, pupils and students can count on the expertise and support of a range of companies and organizations that will assist them in building these great and cool machines. 
 
Who’s behind MyMachine?
MyMachine is founded in Belgium (Europe) by The Community Foundation of West-Flanders, Intercommunale Leiedal (intermunicipal body) and Howest University. This special partnership between three very different organizations delivers!

MyMachine ran a pilot in Kortrijk in Belgium in 2008-2009, and easily reached 550 children, pupils and students from 17 schools. In September 2009, MyMachine started again with a new cycle. But this one is a lot bigger. Now over 1.200 children from 50 schools will participate. Over 20 companies and non-profit partners enthusiastically endorsed MyMachine. All partners support the project not only financially, but also with knowledge, knowhow and materials to build the “MyMachines”.

Creativity in education
MyMachine is a truly bottom-up initiative. It was also triggered by sir Ken Robinson. “We are educated out of creativity” says Ken Robinson. Education, throughout the world, is unfortunately not capable of discovering talent in pupils and does not at all stimulate creativity. Therefore, we wanted to start with MyMachine and bring together three educational levels in a leveraging initiative.

MyMachine in your country?
Organizations in several countries in Europe, North America & Asia have shown a big interest in joining MyMachine. The MyMachine team is at this moment working on the MyMachine-model for replicating in different countries. This will soon be launched and will be the foundation of how we see MyMachine evolve internationally. If you need further information our would like to initiate MyMachine in your country, please do not hesitate to contact us on info@mymachine.be 

More information: www.mymachine.be

MyMachine