A creative learning agency bringing real world opportunities to ordinary children so they can achieve extraordinary things together.
Explorium is a disruptive innovation intent on bringing about widespread change to the educational landscape through our supplementary and complimentary education model. Whilst many education innovations today are based around edtech we place the original learning machine – the child – at the centre of our social business. We exist to make our equation a reality for as many children as possible.
What if our children could run away with the Circus? This was the question Julia found herself asking a team of volunteer parents when given the task of raising funds for her daughter’s school. Nine months later they had trained all 106 children to be circus acts performing a 90 minute show and raising invaluable funds for some new school buildings. They won the national PTA award and realised that when learning is real children can achieve some extrordinary things. Over the next two years and more successful creative events the brick wall of the education system began to take its toll. It placed limitations on what was possible when you look at learning in a different way. So we headed into the woods where there were no walls!
Almost a year later, in September 2012, we opened our first supplementary education programme in the skittle alley of a local pub with a group of 15 children. Six weeks later we opened our first centre in a former rural primary school in Compton Dundon, Somerset. We opened up to children during holidays and after school. We spent our first two years constantly redesigning our practice to be in line with our vision of ‘learning from the inside out’.
In June 2015 we opened to local state schools and within a week had five schools signed up to our Wired For Learning project. Our growth strategy for the next two years includes opening our first Explorium on the site of a Secondary school. This will enable us to perfect our low cost sustainable model so that we can collaborate with more schools in the UK.
We have our sights set on changing the educational landscape at a grassroots and policy level. We know it will be hard work. We expect setbacks and will be taking some big risks, but that is the ethos of Explorium so we’d expect nothing less. If you want to be a part of this evolving journey then help us get the chance to pitch to Richard Branson. Be part of our equation. Be part of the change.