01
Find the problem
Butcher's paper on every table, and three minutes of thinking alone before anyone was allowed to talk. Teams were told to pick the thing that actually annoyed them.
Past event · Friday 7 August 2026
Youth Futures Lab.
For a day, around 75 high schoolers turned their attention to the region they’re growing up in. Working in teams, they picked a problem that actually bothers them, worked it into an idea together, and stood up in front of a room to share it. Held at NUspace City Campus, University of Newcastle, our third Salon of the 2026 season. This is how the day went.
Date
Friday 7 August 2026
Time
9:30am to 2:30pm
Venue
NUspace, University of Newcastle
Format
Teams of 5 to 6 · ~75 students
Smart + Kind Newcastle.
No one told them the answers. Teams of five or six chose one part of life in the region they wanted to change, talked it through until one idea stood out, and built something they could share with a room of strangers.
9:30am · Doors open
Doors this way. NUspace City Campus, 9:30am. 
Room X-101, and around 75 students on their way in. 
A warm-up prompt waiting on every table: name your favourite spot in Newy.
Smart. Kind. Real.
We didn’t lecture anyone on what to build. Every team found their own problem and their own idea, and the room simply asked the same three questions of every single one.
Make it smart
Does it improve how the region actually works?
Make it kind
Does it improve how people feel, belong, access, connect or participate?
Make it real
Is there something you could actually show a room, not just say to it?
Ten questions, chosen by the room.
Every table picked their own lane and ran with it. Scroll to turn the dial through the ten questions on offer.
Question01of 10
Getting around
How can young people move around Newcastle more freely, safely, cheaply and independently?
From a blank table to a room full of ideas.
Five hours, one question per team, and a whole lot of butcher’s paper in between. Three moments that repeated at every table in the room.
02Open doors, not answers
Crew and guests moved between the tables all day with questions instead of solutions. The one that rescued the most tables: what changes because your idea exists?
03Share it with the room
A wheel drew the running order. Two minutes per team, in front of a room of people they had mostly just met, and a panel there to listen.
The full day, start to finish.
By early afternoon, every team stood up and shared their idea, two minutes each, with a panel that was there to listen, not to judge.
Photos from the day.
Every table, every poster, every idea, captured across the day. Browse and download the full set.
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