Innovation. It has certainly been a buzzword in education and schools for a while now. But it’s not just the education sector using this word. Do a quick online search for Innovation Centres and you’ll find results from around the world and in every sector from business and marketing to technology and health care. Narrow that search down to “schools innovation centre” and it seems a number of schools have an innovation building or are constructing one or have created positions with Innovation in their titles. Now, I say all this as the leader of my own school’s Innovation Precinct. I am a teacher librarian and head of library services and I run a buzzing, vibrant, creative and -yep, I’m saying it – innovative Innovation Precinct.
What is an innovation precinct or centre?
Far more than just a building, an innovation centre brings together everything students need to take their ideas and learning beyond what can be achieved in a classroom. This fits so perfectly with what I believe a library offers staff and students – those unique spaces and resources that simply don’t fit or work in a classroom space. An innovation centre might include anything from additional classroom spaces to technological resources, study and focus areas, breakout and meeting rooms, professional learning areas, construction workshops or makerspaces, and large group venues. But, again, an innovation centre needs to be more than just a building. I’ve had the privilege of visiting a number of Innovation Centres and meeting the incredible teams who run them, like the Innovation Centre at Immanuel Lutheran College, run by the incredible Kelly Dunham. She’s allowed me to share photos of her space here.
Bringing an innovation centre alive
So, you have an innovation centre or want to create one. To bring it alive and make it buzz, it needs people, staff to guide and work alongside staff and students using the space. It needs purpose and direction, a strategic plan, goals and objectives. It needs accessibility and flexibility. And most of all it needs someone to bring that all together and show others what the space and resources can do. A space without staff is just an empty room.
Purpose
I think the first step in creating an innovation centre is defining its purpose. What purpose does the space have? What is its main goal? Calling it innovative is not enough, because in that context, innovation is just a buzzword, thrown around with far too much frequency and not enough depth of understanding. I explored what innovation is in the education and school library context here.
An innovation centre should seek to make teachers’ practice more innovative – where they can adopt new practices, take risks in their practice, try new things, solve problems and add value to their teaching. An innovation centre enables students to be innovative to solve problems, face challenges, think creatively, and bring value through positive change. The purpose of the innovation centre should also align with the school’s strategic plan. It should also have its own strategic plan and goals and objectives, along with ways to measure the impact and delivery of these.
What’s in an innovation centre?
I always say the Innovation Precinct offers my school community spaces and resources that can’t be found in other areas. It offers flexibility, versatility and spaces for events, whole group sessions, and individual projects. My Innovation Precinct contains the secondary school library, across two floors. There is a senior study area for students needing individual spaces for quiet study. There are multiple classrooms, that can also be opened up and connected for events or large group sessions. There are four smaller rooms, used as small group classrooms, breakout spaces, recording spaces and for meetings. There is a large group auditorium with tiered seating. There is a massive makerspace areas, equipped both for no-tech, low-tech and high-tech prototyping and designing. But an innovation centre doesn’t have to have all that, that just gives me a lot of zoning and flexibility and you could achieve that in one big open space. The purpose of your space is to meet needs and to be flexible enough to do that. See need and respond to it in creative ways that bring value, that’s innovation.
More than just spaces – staff
Without staff, an innovation building is just that, an empty building. Staff make an innovation centre available to staff and students outside of the rigidity of timetables, allowing for ongoing project work. Staff ensure the spaces are able to meet the needs of those visiting, including moving furniture and designing layouts to suit the needs of the groups, class or event. They prepare resources and equipment. They also work along staff and students in the space to show them how to best use the resources and equipment, enabling staff and students to achieve more, go further or feel more confident in the space. Staff also curate and prepare displays and activities to get students involved and provoke their creativity and thinking.
Accessibility
To have a space that is accessible to all but also not tied to traditional forms of timetabling and single-use classroom spaces, the innovation centre must be easy to access by all, open to all, and available to all.
To truly offer accessibility to staff and students, my innovation centre is open before and after the regular timetabled school day, as well as during the school lunch breaks. That’s why the library fits so beautifully in these spaces because so many school libraries already offer and support these extended services.
Accessibility also means the space should be easily used by classes throughout the day. To do this, we implemented a booking system that shows which spaces are available at any given time and allows staff to book these spaces and resources. All spaces are available for use by all grade levels and all staff.
Flexibility
Flexible is key in an innovation centre. Flexibility to adapt to new ways of learning, creating and doing. Flexibility to adapt to staff and student needs. Flexibility to achieve whatever is needed that day. To achieve flexibility, we have all furniture on wheels, good storage, staff to make these transitions happen and an attitude towards flexibility. Anything can and should be changed. We make things happen every day. Nothing is fixed. There is no one way of doing things.
Multi-purpose spaces
Each space needs to be able to suit multiple purposes. A single-purpose space will quickly become dormant. Just like innovation itself, the spaces will need to adapt and change to fit student needs. At one time, our building might be supporting science classes constructing 3D neurons, library classes, a whole-group information session, meetings and much more. There are spaces suited to specific purposes, such as meeting spaces, but they always remain multipurpose, a meeting space one minute, a podcast recording studio the next, then a dungeons and dragons or board game club room and then a small group study area. To stay flexible, nothing, not even technology, is fixed. Everything is on wheels and portable. Everything can be cleared away or find a new home to live.
Promoting the vision
Having all this doesn’t make it useful, it’s only useful when it’s used and that means promoting it with staff and students. That means I send emails about what we have and how it can be used, run short sessions during briefing to share how the booking system works, tell students over and over again that it’s their space to use, run PD sessions with staff on how to use the tools and equipment available, have Innovation Precinct staff who work alongside staff and students, and create videos about how the space has been used. The promotion never ever ends. The only way to get people involved is to cast the vision and invite them in, work with them, show them how the space works and stand alongside them in the space.
I love the buzz I hear and see when I walk through the Innovation Precinct. I love that it’s a space for all, a quiet retreat, a place to connect, and a place to learn and explore ideas. It’s the living embodiment of a thriving library.
Do you have an innovation centre or building? Do you think they hold value in schools?