The shape
The DreamSpace Lifecycle is three stages, one thread and four support modes. It picks up where the learning journey leaves off, and it describes one of the things a person can do next, build a venture out of a solution they have already tested.
Challenge-based learning is a method, and methods run through stages rather than occupying one. Domain expertise is something a changemaker draws on when they need it , documented cases used it without ever passing through the labs. Both were once numbered as stages; both describe the whole pathway better than they describe any part of it.
Ways in
| Route | How it works | Standing |
|---|---|---|
| Co-created | The four stages of the learning journey build the motivation rather than hunting for it. | Current practice. It converts discovery from a search problem into a delivery problem. |
| Discovered | Outreach, bootcamps, exposure events, discovery workshops. | The historical route, and the hard one. Waiting for already-motivated people to surface makes supply unpredictable. |
| Scouted | Somebody is found through work they had already published themselves. | Real but minor: one documented case. |
The hardest constraint was identifying changemakers, not access to people. Intake was already open and already worked at volume. What was hard was that the model waited for motivated individuals to appear. Building the motivation instead is what makes the pathway plannable.
Entry is condition-based rather than sequential. People have entered at the innovation stage already innovating, and through the labs, as well as at the front.
The converting act
A candidate becomes a changemaker by producing a grassroots innovation. Not by time served, not by completing a programme, not by intent. The output can be a product, a service or an initiative, the form is not what matters. Three tests are, and all three are required:
- The problem came from the community.
- A user outside the makerspace has tested the solution.
- Somebody depends on the outcome.
This is the best-evidenced part of the model, and it defines who counts. It is also the sense in which grassroots innovation is used in the wider literature, solutions arising from the community that has the problem, rather than delivered into it[47, 46].
A technically excellent build with no community origin and no outside user leaves its maker an Innovator, which is a complete place to be. Not every innovator is a changemaker.
This gate is the least evidenced stage in the academy's own case record. The destination stage appears in far more documented cases than the conversion into it does. The pathway is best evidenced where it ends and weakest where it turns.
Venture building
The destination stage is for changemakers who take the venture route. Its purpose is to launch and grow a venture with impact at its centre, and progress is measured by whether the venture is operating with revenue and impact being tracked. Programmes are designed for this stage (a startup challenge with a capped award, for instance) rather than running every founder through one route.
How that works, and what is and is not claimed about the ventures it has produced, is on ventures and incubation.
The thread
Challenge-based learning is how teaching runs at every point on the pathway, not a stage within it. Lab rotations, interdisciplinary workshops and challenge projects appear before discovery, during innovation and inside venture building. Inquiry is anchored to where somebody is: tinkering, then project-based learning, then challenge-based learning, then challenge-based learning with action attached.
The four support modes
Offered in any combination and any order, before or after conversion. The record shows nobody using them as a sequence.
Co-creation
Building with the changemaker, co-founding, joint projects, shared risk.
Bridging
Introductions to funders, experts, networks and global opportunities.
Domain expertise
Specialists, including international ones, brought in to refine a solution.
Funding
Seed grants, an impact-loan fund, and help getting funded by somebody else.
Where people go
What follows the learning journey is an open outcome field, not a fixed set of destinations. Documented routes include building a venture, research and academia, activism and community leadership, employment and freelancing, and growing an existing family enterprise. Those are examples, and no total is published: a count would make a list of documented cases look like a complete one.
Only the venture route arrives at this pathway. The others are not failures of it, and people who exited to academia or to employment are recorded as successes.
Why students who stopped attending left is not currently known, and their feedback is the most useful there is. A pathway with no exit route cannot model retention. Every stage should record leavers and their reasons; not every stage does.
The measure this makes possible
Candidate-to-changemaker conversion rate = grassroots innovations produced ÷ candidates entered.
Because the gate is defined, the denominator falls out of it automatically, and without a denominator the rate cannot be stated. The historical figures are most likely candidate counts. The response is to recount and then publish both numbers, candidates and changemakers, which makes the conversion rate visible.
That rate is not on this site, because the recount has not been done. When it is, it will appear here whatever it says.