Workshops
Impact Day
Work Experience
Generation Innovation is a future-focused Work Experience Programme designed to empower, enable, and upskill young people for the workplace of tomorrow. With its foundations grounded in the principles of Design Thinking, Generation Innovation is a one-of-a-kind programme that gives young people a real-world working experience with some of the most innovative companies making a dent in the universe.
This Work Experience Programme is for all 17-18-year-olds interested in accelerating their career development, gaining awareness of the skills needed for tomorrow’s world, and building an innovation mindset through Design Thinking training.
During the programme, students will be paired with innovative employers, such as Coca-Cola, FinTru or EY, and will learn how to work as part of a new team. Their skills will be put to the test to solve a real-life company challenge, developing a solution before pitching it to the partner company and fellow peers.
Thank you to the Department for the Economy for supporting Generation Innovation.
The 2024 programme will involve 700 students this June for 3 in-person events.
Option 1:
11th – 14th June | Derry-Londonderry, The Millennium Forum
Option 2:
17th – 21st June | Belfast, Catalyst, Queen’s Road
Option 3:
24th – 27th June | Dungannon, The Junction
Applications for the 2024 Work Experience Programme are now closed.
Anyone aged 17-18 years old.
Nothing – it’s free to attend!
Benefits of attending
What's Included
Hosted in-person
Work with some of Northern Ireland's most exciting and innovative companies
Receive free limited edition apparel merchandise and win extra prizes
Free to attend
Access to the Generation Innovation Alumni network
Have fun and meet other young people
Accelerate your development by learning about exciting future career prospects
Receive training from expert facilitators
Learn in a fun, energetic, and highly engaging way that'll inspire and empower you for the future
Skills you'll gain
What's Included
Communication Skills
Teambuilding
Build Emotional Resilience
Learn Problem-Solving Skills
Creativity
Presentation and Pitching Skills
User-centred Design
Design-led Thinking Skills
Our workshops are open to all 16-18-year-old groups (5th-U6th years), completely free of charge.
All we ask from you is that your classroom or assembly hall is set up with tables and chairs and that we have access to a projector – it’s that easy!
Please note that workshops are limited and so we advise you to book ahead of time. Workshops will only be delivered to a minimum of 20 students.
This year, we have expanded our offering to give you the option between three workshops.
Students will also have early access to register for the Generation Innovation Work Experience Programme at each workshop!
Skills to pay the bills
This workshop will help your students stretch their imagination and begin a journey exploring:
What's Included
The Innovation Mindset.
Upskilling for the future job market, giving the inside track into what employers look for.
Careers in tech, innovation & entrepreneurship.
Presentation & interview techniques.
Diving into design
This workshop will help students learn about the benefits of adopting a Design–Thinking mindset and will cover areas such as:
What's Included
What is design?
Applying the Design–Thinking approach to real-life business challenges.
Diving deeper with a mini-design sprint.
Pitching your ideas back.
Exploring Entrepreneurship
This workshop will demystify entrepreneurship for students and help them understand how they can turn their ideas into reality by:
What's Included
Defining entrepreneurship
Outlining the steps in creating an actionable plan, and setting up and running a business.
Expanding your students’ marketing and branding knowledge through interactive exercises.
Showcasing inspirational entrepreneurs.
Fuel ambition, spark ideas and empower your students through design thinking.
A one-day, fully immersive design thinking experience for groups of 90+ students aged 16-18-years-old (5th-U6th years) held onsite at your venue. No need to mobilise, we’ll come to you and take your students on a design thinking journey that will lead them from identifying a problem, working through several stages to iterate and design a prototype/solution all in the one day.
On this journey, your students will learn important skills at each stage, including user-centred design, working in a team and critical thinking. The impact day will also help foster soft skills such as empathy, emotional intelligence, and resilience.
Our team of design thinking trainers will come to your venue and will deliver a design sprint, working through several stages of the design thinking methodology. During the design sprint, there will be creative icebreakers and fun games to stimulate ideas and keep the energy alive.
Empathise
Understanding the user base and ‘consumer’, how they interact with the world/system or product, and understanding their needs and behaviours.
Define
Together each team will work together to define a problem and then design solution for it. This could even be applied to improving something within your everyday life, asking the question ‘How might we…?
Ideate
Our team will work with your students in different groups and walk them through an ideation phase where they can start to design and develop a solution for the defined problem. Here, students will contribute ideas, challenge assumptions, and work together as a team to develop a solution.
Present
At the end of the day each team will present their solution to the group in a very welcoming and engaging environment.
We will finish the day with a visit from a number of our partner companies who will demonstrate some innovative technology and share their own start-up journey. Students will become part of the Generation Innovation community and will be given branded merchandise to remember the experience alongside resources to continue their journey.
Absolutely nothing, this is a fully funded programme with no cost to you; all we need is a dedicated space and time to deliver the Impact Day.
Could your company empower the next generation of innovators? Do you want to spot and shape NI’s talent for the future workplace?
If you would like to find out how to get involved with any elements of Generation Innovation, simply register your interest below and a member of the team will be in touch.
Programme Manager - Youth and Ambition
Judith is the programme manager for Youth and Ambition within Catalyst. She designs and delivers the Generation Innovation programme and our Inclusive Innovation Programme. Through these programmes Judith gets to inspire, equip and encourage young people across NI to gain the skills they need that will set them up for a successful future.
Judith has worked with young people in a variety of settings over the past 12 years and her passion is seeing young people thrive, grow in confidence and supporting them to make their best next step in life!
Project Administrator – Generation Innovation
Carolyn Halferty joined Catalyst as the project administrator in October 2021. She is specifically responsible for maintaining and growing the Generation Innovation partnership porfolio. Carolyn’s role also involves planning and delivering events and programmes.
Carolyn worked as a senior business executive with BMW for 15 years and now loves using her love of connecting with people to connect the next generation with world leading local innovative companies.
Carolyn is passionate about helping each and every young person gain the self belief that they can pursue any goal and also help them discover what those goals may be.
Project Coordinator – Generation Innovation
Declan is a Project Coordinator for Generation Innovation, where he assists in organising the work experience programme as well as delivering workshops and impact days to young people.
He achieved an Arkwright Engineering scholarship in school before attending Trinity College Dublin, where he obtained a degree in Engineering with Management.
After finishing a Technology Consulting internship with Deloitte, Declan moved on to work for Spark Crowdfunding as their Special Projects and Digital Marketing Manager, which gave him exposure to the Irish startup ecosystem, funding routes and supports available.
Programme Manager – Youth and Ambition
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