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“Today (Wednesday 18th August), Thinktastic Managing Director Mike Stevenson will chair a debate between leading politicians and educationalists and challenge Scottish schools to produce a new generation of creative and compassionate young people.”
The debate takes place as part of Edinburgh’s Festival of Politics at the Scottish Parliament. It will feature discussion and commentary from General Teaching Council for Scotland (GTC) Chief Executive Tony Finn, UK Ambassador for Action for Children the Right Honourable Lord Jack McConnell of Glenscorrodale MSP, award-winning head teacher Isabelle Boyd CBE and legendary songwriter Ewan McVicar.
Mike Stevenson said: “Scotland has a confidence deficit. We have long wrestled with our place in the world. We accept indefensible levels of ill health, poverty and alcohol abuse. We accept an inherited dependency on the state to tackle community and family challenges. We are burdened by a weary ‘don’t get above yourself’ cynicism.
“Teachers instinctively recognise this frontline. Today’s debate represents a unique opportunity to examine how we can practically equip our young people to live healthier, happier, more enterprising, lives. I believe schools are ‘think tanks’ stuffed with the ingenuity and imagination we need to rediscover our nation’s pride. We will discuss how Scottish school children tackled community alcohol abuse. We will discuss how children from Manchester decreased neighbourhood traffic violations. This is not vague wishful thinking. This is a new mandate for tackling Scotland’s confidence deficit in a surprisingly effective way.”
MEDIA INVITE: Please join the debate on 18 August 2010, from 5 to 6pm, at the Scottish Parliament, Committee Room 1. Contact Dawn Campbell, Bread PR, on 07540 266 374, for tickets, more information, interviews and photography.
About Mike Stevenson. During a ‘badly wired’ youth in the 60's, Mike slept on the streets of London and busked in Dublin before a near death experience became a ‘turning point’. His new found work ethic saw him carrying bricks, fitting carpets, selling linoleum, furniture and suits, corking French wine and working shifts in a steel works. He had spells as hospital orderly, youth worker, community worker and ran children’s play schemes. Mike has played guitar at a number of music festivals and performed on stage and in films – and all this before he entered the world of marketing. Mike has for fifteen years been managing director of Thinktastic’s founding company Design Links, voted Business in the Community’s Scottish Small Company of Year 2008, and acclaimed for its unique approaches to marketing. He is passionate about the power of ordinary people to achieve extraordinary results and was given special recognition with a Merrill Lynch sponsored award for Raising the Attainment of Young People.
In January 1994, Mike Stevenson and Gary Kidd launched Design Links, a design agency that generated bold, ground breaking ideas, time and time again. This successful formula led to a turnover of £1m in 2004 in a tight competitive market. The following year, Mike took the bold step of a management buyout and in his first year achieved a turnover of £1.3m. Following voluntary work at Edinburgh’s Craigroyston High School, where Mike created a workshop style think-tank for pupils to develop their own ideas to improve the school and its external brand, he realised the same concept could be applied to build strong energetic businesses and enterprising communities. Inspired by this new way of creative thinking, Mike changed his company name to Thinktastic in October 2009 to reflect his goal of generating societal change and business success in surprising and unusual ways.
Thinktastic provides a variety of design services and Mike is an accomplished motivational speaker who has inspired large companies like BSkyB and Marks and Spencer to public services such as the City of Edinburgh foster care services and the University of Leeds. The company has been awarded the Scottish Business in the Community Small Company of the Year 2008, three consecutive Big Tick Awards in Education and is one of the UK’s pioneering Community Mark companies.
Thinktastic’s manifesto, released in August 2010, is committed to generating the creative power to fuel the new business revolution.
Got something creative? Something amazing? Need our brand for it? Not a problem, here are a few resources:
(The pdf includes our basic brand guidelines along with examples of our logo. If you would like vector or high res image versions of our logo, please contact us)
Mike Stevenson
e: mike@thinktastic.co.uk
t: 0131 202 1667
Laura Laidlaw
Financial Control
e: laural@thinktastic.co.uk
t: 0131 202 1668
Paula Allan
Creative Design and Production
e: paula@thinktastic.co.uk
t: 0131 202 1669
