On July 30, the winners of the national final of the Creative Spark Big Idea Challenge 2021 from the British Council Ukraine were announced. 5 out of 12 teams of young startup makers from all over Ukraine represented Tech StartUp School, Lviv Polytechnic National University. They presented their ideas in four categories related to climate change, social impact, digital technologies and creative environment.
– For the third year in a row, the Creative Spark Big Idea Challenge 2021 is part of a joint project of the British Council Ukraine, Kingston University and Lviv Polytechnic Tech StartUpSchool. In total, over 700 people from all over Ukraine took part in the training last year, most of them were from Lviv, in particular from Lviv Polytechnic. We partially conducted live training in Kyiv and Lviv. More than 300 teams applied for the competition, out of which we selected 30, and 12 teams reached the finals, including 5 from Lviv Polytechnic. Two teams won in three categories and two more received mentoring support from Metropolitan University London, says Director of Tech StartUpSchool Nazarii Podolchak.
The next stage of the competition envisages international competitions, so the AId team from Lviv Polytechnic will compete with the winners from seven countries.
– In three weeks we will start training again within the Creative Spark project. This time we plan to expand it even more, because, due to the saved funds, we have more money. We want to create a Creative Hub business incubator, which will operate in 20th academic building. The Creative Spark program will be presented there and participants will be able to consult with mentors at a convenient time. We also want to start a specialty «Administration of Creative Industries» and create a Ukrainian-British venture fund that would finance the development of these startups, added Nazarii Podolchak.