LCF Graduate Futures recently launched the first LCF only Hackathon event, seeing students from across the College’s courses collaborate, to create innovative solutions to real-world social issues. Hosted at Spitalfields in collaboration with The Mayor’s Fund for London, the LCF Hackathon empowered students’ creatively problem solving skills, teaching them the skills to develop business ideas to address social and environmental challenges and create positive change.
Nurturing emerging entrepreneurial talent since conception in 2020, LCF Graduate Futures (formerly known as the Student Enterprise Team), strive to showcase entrepreneurship as a viable career path to students.
“Practice-based learning is such a key success factor especially within the enterprise sphere. Understanding the art of problem solving, ideation, strategic thinking, communication alongside strong teamwork skills is no mean feat. The art of being enterprising is having an idea and making it happen. Our students illustrated their ideation competencies during the hack.” - Frances Odell, Head of Graduate Futures Consultants
During the event students heard from inspiring from industry experts, including Charlie Thompson, COO with Ripple Effect and alumna Kaela Katz, Founder of Fibre Lab and Mayors Challenge winner 2021, who helped them grow their ideas. At the end of the 2 day event, each team pitched their business proposal to a panel of specialist judges:
The judges were impressed with the level of work the students were able to achieve in a 24 hour period, remarking on the incredible thought and depth of research the team completed to support their pitches. They were especially impressed with the storytelling skills and community focused use of technology of the winning team, ‘Vintage Radar’.
Consisting of team members from across LCF Postgraduate cohorts, Vintage Radar pitched an app which would use AI to connect customers of vintage clothing directly with thrift stores, offering style suggestions based around available products.
“The hackathon was an incredible experience: meeting new people, working seamlessly as a team, and embracing a vibrant overall atmosphere, all of which fuelled the creation of new ideas.” - Mariana Muhle
With more LCF students that ever, forging career pathways in self-employment; events like this are pivotal to developing much needed communication and storytelling skills in our student body. Encouraging them to pursue their curiosities and remain agile and resilient in an ever-changing creative landscape.
Watch this space for new activities in Graduates Futures’ support offer, seeking to help our students make their ideas happen.