How the Lifecycle is structured
The DreamSpace Lifecycle is the route DreamSpace Academy offers to someone who wants to build a venture out of a solution they have already tested. It picks up where our education leaves off, for example at the end of the Changemaker Journey in the STEAM programmes.
Building a venture is one of several things a person can do next. The others are described under where people go next.
The Lifecycle has three stages, one thread and four support modes:
- The stages: Changemaker Discovery, then Grassroots Innovation, then Impact-Venture Building.
- The thread: challenge-based learning, which runs through all three stages.
- The support modes: co-creation, bridging, domain expertise and funding, available at any point.
Challenge-based learning is a way of teaching, and a way of teaching is used at every stage rather than at one.
Domain expertise (specialist knowledge) is something a changemaker draws on when they need it. Some people have used it without ever going through the labs.
Both describe the whole route better than any single part of it.
How people enter the Lifecycle
People come into the Lifecycle by one of three routes.
| Route | How it works | How it is used |
|---|---|---|
| Co-created | In the STEAM programmes, the four stages of the Changemaker Journey build people’s motivation, instead of searching for people who already have it. | The route we use now. Finding changemakers becomes something we can teach towards, not something we have to hope for. |
| Discovered | Outreach, bootcamps, exposure events, discovery workshops. | The earlier route, and the hard one. Waiting for people who are already motivated to turn up means nobody knows how many will come. |
| Scouted | Somebody is found through work they had already published themselves. | Real but rare: it has happened only a few times. |
The hardest part used to be finding changemakers. Intake was already open and brought in large numbers, but we had to wait for motivated people to appear. Building the motivation instead means we can plan ahead.
People do not have to start at the beginning. They can join at whatever stage fits what they are already doing. Some have joined at the innovation stage because they were already innovating, and some through the labs, as well as at the start.
Conversion: how a candidate becomes a changemaker
A candidate becomes a changemaker by producing a grassroots innovation: a solution to a local problem. Time spent, a finished course or good intentions alone do not count. The innovation can be a product, a service or an initiative, and it has to pass all three of these tests:
- The problem came from the community.
- A real user who is not on the project team has tested the solution.
- Somebody depends on the outcome.
This test decides who counts as a changemaker, and it is the best-evidenced part of the Lifecycle. Researchers use grassroots innovation in the same way: solutions that come from the community that has the problem, rather than being brought in from outside[47, 46].
Someone can build something technically excellent that did not come from a community problem and has not been tested by a real user outside the project team. That person is an Innovator, which is a complete place to be. Not every innovator is a changemaker.
This gate is the step we know least about. We have far more examples of people at the last stage, building ventures, than of people taking the step to becoming a changemaker.
Venture building: launching and growing a venture
The last stage is for changemakers who choose to build a venture. Its aim is to launch and grow a venture whose main purpose is to do good for the community (an impact venture).
Progress is measured by whether the venture is up and running, with its income and its impact being tracked. We design programmes for this stage, such as a startup challenge with a fixed maximum award, rather than putting every founder through the same route.
Ventures and incubation sets out how that works, and what we do and do not claim about the ventures we have produced.
Challenge-based learning: the thread
Challenge-based learning means learning by working on a real problem. It is how teaching runs at every point in the Lifecycle, rather than being one stage of it. Time in each lab in turn, workshops that mix subjects, and challenge projects all happen before discovery, during innovation and inside venture building.
The kind of learning matches where each person is on the Changemaker Journey:
- Explorer: hands-on exploration.
- Maker: project work with guidance.
- Innovator: project-based learning, set inside a real challenge.
- Changemaker: challenge-based learning that leads to action.
Support we offer along the way
We offer four kinds of support, in any mix and any order, before or after someone becomes a changemaker. So far, nobody has used them as a fixed sequence.
Co-creation
Building with the changemaker: co-founding, joint projects and shared risk.
Bridging
Introductions to funders, experts, networks and global opportunities.
Domain expertise
Specialists, including international ones, brought in to refine a solution.
Funding
Small starting grants (seed grants), an impact-loan fund, and help getting funding from others.
Where people go next
After our education, people can go in many directions. We call this an open outcome field: there is no fixed list of destinations. Routes people have taken include:
- building a venture
- research and university study
- activism and community leadership
- a job or freelance work
- working for DreamSpace Academy itself for a time (the route we call Grow Your Own)
- leaving
These are examples, not a complete list, so no total is given.
Only the venture route leads into the Lifecycle. The other routes are not failures: we count people who went into academia or a job as successes.
We do not yet know why learners who stopped coming left, and their feedback is the most useful there is. Without knowing who leaves, there is no way to understand who stays. Every stage should note who leaves and why, and not every stage does yet.
Conversion rate: how many candidates become changemakers
The conversion rate is the share of candidates who go on to become changemakers. It counts people. Because the gate has a clear test, both groups can be counted.
The number of innovations is measured separately, as innovation yield, because one team can produce several innovations and several people can produce one.
Our past figures are most likely counts of candidates. We will recount them, then publish both numbers, candidates and changemakers, so that the rate can be seen.
We have not published that rate, because we have not done the recount yet. Once it is done, we will publish the rate whatever it shows.