Rapidly emerging new technologies are disrupting the world in an accelerating speed - people call the age we live in VUCA ERA, which is full of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity. How can we better understand what the future holds; navigate and learn new ways to create change and innovation?

DT class at RM Workshop A @ Yushan Academy

UWC Changshu China Yushan Academy Centre for Design and Innovation will host its first Weekend Workshop which are open educational opportunities to local and wider communities.  We invite Tonya, Shanghai Ambassador for SingularityU (https://su.org/) and her Breakline Education team, to share and teach young individuals to use innovative methodologies to transform their lives. With access to first-hand information of future studies and industry innovation methods, students can learn in a fun way to be perceptive, observative and creative with Visual Thinking; and to think forward, manage risk, and fast adapt in a changing environment in the Foresight Workshop. Be the next generation of innovative leaders with global view through our integrated innovation workshops!

Visual thinking Workshop

What Is Visual Thinking? 

 Visual thinking is the ability to organize and synthesize information into patterns. As a methodology, it started from 1970s related to both psychology and critical thinking. Since then, it has played an important role in art and design education over the past decades.

 The tool itself can create better scenarios for innovation, deep reflection, dialogues and engagement, to open up pathways to stimulate the thought process and problem solving. In this way, it helps to generate ideas, as well as reflect and edit them in the process of thinking. Nowadays, it has become a highly demanded skill for innovation.

Workshop Hosts Facilitator：

Leire Reparaz Berrade holds a Bachelor Degree in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Innovation from MTA, a project-based innovative school. She has trained herself the ability to use visual thinking in Make it Visual, D-school of Stanford University. She has co-founded Go For Visual, and hosted visual facilitation in more than 50 schools and companies in China and worldwide, including Fudan University, Tokyo University, Budweiser, General Motors, Bayer and so on.

hat Will You Do In The Workshop? 

 As future change-makers, you will explore with us the basic theory behind Visual Thinking and how it can help us from real life examples. Our workshop is an interactive space where you will learn the basic Visual Alphabet, and how to apply it to create graphics in order to better visualize your own thoughts and team communication in a paper to design the right dynamics to cultivate innovation.

Foresight

What Is Foresight? 

 Strategic foresight is a growing practice in large companies. It is establishing a perceptive connection between reality and the future under conditions of uncertainty in order to realize better planning. For individuals in this changing time, a consideration of probable futures is equally important to develop a preferred future of our own.

 The tool can help us to think systematically appropriately the diverse and relevant inputs, forecasts and alternatives, so we can realize analysis, decision making and future innovation in future multidimensional space-time.

Workshop Host Facilitator ：

Louis is the Chief Innovation Officer at Make-A-Point, co-founder of FuturistCircle, and the Ambassador of China America Innovation Network (CHAIN), Great China Area. He has served as Business and Innovation Strategist at designaffairs under Accenture; Design Affairs of Accenture; founded an innovation strategy consulting firm in Silicon Valley, primarily serving companies from technology startups, Fortune500 corporations and government, where he helped San Francisco government to build the first open innovation platform. Louis has a cross-disciplinary education background in Economics, Finance, Business Administration, Design Strategy and Strategic Foresight from Stanford University, California Institute of Art and West Virginia University.

What Will You Do In The Workshop? 

As future leaders, you will experience with us what is foresight in our daily lives. In Foresight Workshop, you will have an exciting time travel to the future, and learn how to create their own stories about the futures via science fiction and drama play.

 Breakline Education Background

BreakLine Education was founded by Singularity University Shanghai Ambassador Tonya Dong, brings disruptive innovation methods including moonshot thinking from Google and exponential thinking from SU, along with other frontier innovation methods around the world to China. Breakline Education bridges the innovation experts serving world leading corporations to host innovation workshops for high school and university students, where we integrate the innovative methods into the challenges students face in their stage of life.

UWC Changshu China Yushan Academy Centre for Design and Innovation

UWC Changshu China Yushan Academy Centre for Design and Innovation

In September 2018, a traditional Chinese academy was built and opened in UWC Changshu China with a total area of 3,800 square meters. It features the traditional architecture style found by Kuncheng Lake, in a waterside town in southern China, and displays the quintessential elements of Suzhou garden—the courtyard, pavilions and pagodas. The mission of the Centre for Design and Innovation is to provide meaningful educational opportunities for UWC students and the wider community to design and innovate collaboratively for peace and sustainability. Yushan Academy Centre for Design and Innovation also serves as an intercultural, creative hub of Changshu, China; an intersection of the old and the new; a vibrant exchange platform of myriad cultures, ideas and perspectives. Yushan Design and Innovation Institute embodies what UWC Changshu China envisions UWC education to be, now and in the future: to design for peace, innovate for sustainability. The ideal preparation for unprecedented challenges and to capture the opportunities presented by the ever-changing, innovation-driven world. 

We’re recruiting students for our Very First Weekend Workshop!

Young individuals will learn frontier innovation methods and foresight thinking, sitting together with international students from UWC Changshu China, to feel and understand unique UWC culture and school life. Our Architecture Zhi Xing (learn by doing, student-led group) will offer a fun campus tour!

 Time: Sun Nov 25, 2018!

Location: UWC Changshu China Yushan Academy Centre for Design and Innovation 

Classroom: RM Workshop A and RM Workshop B

Address: 88 Kunchenghuxi Road, Changshu, Jiangs

 Schedule：

A Group：9：00-12：00  Visual Thinking

          12：00-13：00  Lunch

          13：00-13：30  Campus Tour

          13：30-16：30  Foresight  

          16：30-16：40  Certificate award  

B Group：9：00-12：00    Foresight  

          12：00-13：00  Lunch

          13：00-13：30  Campus Tour

          13：30-16：30  Visual Thinking

          16：30-16：40  Certificate award

 Age：16-19 years-old

Language：English（Chinese assistance available）

Fee：RMB420 （including lunch）

Numbers of students: 35 students for one workshop, 10 UWC students and 25 external students. 

End date for Registration: Nov 18 or full class.