Emerging Creative Leaders Cape Town Fellowship Program

Following a successful program in Mumbai, award-winning experimental knowledge lab the UnSchool of Disruptive Design has opened applications for the mavericks and creative change-makers of social innovation and sustainability.

Join them in Cape Town for a week-long immersive fellowship programme in Cape Town this May, for an education adventure programme in creative changemaking for emerging leaders.

The UnSchool of Disruptive Design is the brainchild of Dr. Leyla Acaroglu, UNEP Champion of the Earth, TED speaker and globally renowned sustainability provocateur.

This unique program for professionals and emerging leaders, has been run in various international cities including New York, Mexico City, Berlin, San Francisco, Sao Paulo and, most recently, Mumbai and has led to the seeding of a global alumni community of over 350 people from 39 countries in 6 continents.

The programme accepts between 16 - 20 adults for a 7-day intensive, brain-activating experience via a selective application process. The culturally diverse fellowship is an adventure on how to make a positive impact. It also focuses on activating and empowering fellows through immersive learning, active participation and mentorship.

Some of the leading mentors in the programme include: Vuyisa Qabaka, Founding Partner at Entrepreneur Traction, Mokena Makeka, Founder and Principal of Makeka Design Lab, Emile YX?, hip-hop activist and Founder of Heal the Hood and water maverick and disrupter, Bernelle Vester. Applicants will join these world-changers for an incredible week of workshops, field visits, and real-world design challenges.

UnSchool fellows gain valuable experience in disruptive design; social innovation; collaboration; entrepreneurship and social change. The curriculum is diverse, ranging from sessions on creative leadership to gamification and cognitive sciences. Founder and chief educator, Dr Leyla Acaroglu is thrilled to have the programme in Cape Town to share its benefits with local creative change-makers. The not-for profit UnSchool Association offers equity access scholarships, and is committed to seeding a creative change-maker community in every country in the world.

“At the UnSchool we help people become problem lovers not avoiders, thereby unlocking creative potential and uncovering the many diverse ways we can all activate our own agency to affect positive change in the things we do. The disruptive design method is a way in which we can help emerging leaders globally, to develop positive interventions that help solve and evolve some of the complex problems that the world faces,” said Acaroglu.

While the UnSchool has a decidedly hands-on approach to its learning courses (as the actual implementation of design solutions form part of the UnSchool’s curriculum), its programmes also contain compelling theoretical groundwork about the human condition and how the reorientation of certain mindsets can lead to very real changes in society and the natural environment. The UnSchool takes a more collaborative approach to the sharing of knowledge, busting the conventional lecture-to-student relationship in favour of a more level plain.

According to Acaroglu, minimising our environmental impact is no longer enough to ensure a sustainable future for generations to come. She believes it is a cerebral matter, that we must address the mode of thought that leads to global problems before trying to solve them in the same way that they were created.

“We live in this incredibly beautiful complex world, but we spend a lot of our adult lives looking at things in this really one-dimensional level,” she says, “We don’t realise that we try to solve complex problems with the same thinking that led to the problems to begin with.”

The Cape Town fellowship programme will run from 26 May to 1 June 2018. Applications are open until 5 February 2018.