Creative Spark is a British Council programme aimed at developing enterprise education. Mediamax will provide updates on the implementation of the programme in cooperation with the British Council. 

A lively conversation is filling large, light rooms. A group of young people is speaking excitedly, interrupting each other here and then. The business ideas, written on multicolor stickers on the whiteboard, are waiting to be debated. Before we enter the room and join the conversation, we get a feeling that we are looking at a company meeting, a discussion of, let’s say, prospects of development.

It is the topic of discussion, but the students are just learning to stretch their business muscles and searching for ways to build a successful enterprise.

Photo: ANEL

Armenian National Engineering Laboratories (ANEL) of the National Polytechnic University of Armenia has joined the British Council’s Creative Spark programme to teach creative thinking and entrepreneurial skills to Armenian youngsters. ANEL cooperates with ChangeSchool and City, University of London in the scope of this programme.

After receiving the grant, ANEL launched the “Creative Spark ANEL” project to teach entrepreneurial skills to students on a large scale.

According to ANEL Manager Amalya Mkhitaryan, the Polytechnic University implemented similar project before and the National Engineering Laboratories was tasked with providing entrepreneurial knowledge. She has introduced Mediamax to the details of the “Creative Spark ANEL” project.

The “contagious” desire to run a business

We talked with partner universities and decided to create a hub that would include already existing centers and laboratories and take business skills to another level by teaching comprehensive solutions.

Photo: ANEL

Contrary to other grant winners, we went for a large-scale project. Our goal is to teach basic business knowledge to as many students as possible and motivate them to let entrepreneurship into their lives.

We want the students to be “infected” with ideas, become creative entrepreneurs and try a new approach for their business.

Teaching unconventional methods 

In the first phase of the project, local experts underwent retraining that took into account the experience of partner universities and companies.

The applicants for the position of instructor in “Creative Spark” were all people committed to the project. The first and key criterion for selection was the desire to be involved. The second one was fluency in English, because the retraining was conducted by English-speaking experts and the instructors were expected to teach the participants of the project in Armenian. The third criterion was readiness to use unconventional methods and work outside of familiar environment. The organizers also considered the applicants’ occupation. They wanted to hire not economists, but engineers, programmers, designers, i.e. people who would learn entrepreneurial thinking at Creative Spark and then teach it to the students.

Photo: ANEL

As a result, the organizers gathered a diverse squad of instructors representing almost all fields. The instructors not only pass their knowledge to the project participants, but also involve the students in their respective fields.

One of the pre-conditions for the project was for instructors to be teachers from our university. We retrained over 30 experts, who proceeded to conduct multistage “Creative Entrepreneurship” trainings.

Expanded borders and promising ideas

We decided to implement the project not only in Polytechnic University, but also higher education institutions that are not involved in Creative Spark programme. We chose Yerevan State University, French University, Armenian State University of Economics, and Armenian State Institute of Physical Culture and Sport. We wanted to bring the Creative Spark knowledge to the marzes as well, so we included our university’s branches in Gyumri, Vanadzor and Kapan in the project.

Amalya Mkhitaryan

Photo: Mediamax

We tried to give the participants basic business knowledge in 18 hours. The courses usually took 5 days. We have taught entrepreneurial skills to almost 580 students, which will certainly contribute to development of business ecosystem in Armenia. This is good experience both for our teachers and the students.

Photo: ANEL

In conclusion of the project we want to hold a contest of business ideas. The students worked on their ideas during the courses to be ready for a pitching in this format.

We hope Creative Spark will carry on and give us the opportunity to move forward. We have bigger goals now: methodology, consultation for business ideas.

The ultimate objective is to create a business hub in the university to help those participants who want to take their ideas to market.

Photo: ANEL

Creative Spark is a five year initiative designed to support international university and institutional partnerships to develop enterprise skills and creative economy across seven countries in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan), South Caucasus (Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia) and Ukraine through UK support. 

Due to the success of year one of the Creative Spark, the British Council announced it would fund a further 12 international partnerships. Each partnership will receive a maximum of GBP 40,000.

The applications for the grant will be accepted here from April 1 to May 12, 2019.

Marie Taryan 

Photos: Emin Aristakesyan and ANEL 

The series about “Creative Spark” on Mediamax.am is supported by the British Council.