Last week, we announced that MyMachine Wallonie’s (Belgium) creativity is hitting an all-time high, now, we’re here to touch base on MyMachine Flanders & Brussels’ kick-off. Because the new MyMachine season in the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium has also started! Students in primary schools in all provinces of this region have been invited to invent...
MyMachine Wallonie (Belgium)’s creativity hits an all-time high! The new MyMachine season in the French-speaking part of Belgium has started! Students in primary schools in the provinces of Liège and Luxembourg have been invited to invent their Dream Machine. Anything goes, as long as they really, really want it. These children remind us —the adults—...
This is the kick-off of the new MyMachine Liège (Belgium) season! No, it’s not. It’s MyMachine Wallonie from now on! After initiating MyMachine in the province of Liège, we’re now ready to grow. In this coming year, there will be schools joining in the province of Luxembourg as well. Both Liege and Luxembourg ar part...
This video teleports you to MyMachine Liège in Belgium (Europe). You’ll discover inspiring testimonies from all MyMachine stakeholders! Students in primary, technical secondary, and higher education, industry professionals, and educators all explain how they experience MyMachine. Thank you so much to our amazing MyMachine Liège team at Basse-Meuse Développement!
The vibrant city of Liège (Belgium, Europe) provided the vibrant space for a vibrant celebration party of vibrant students, educators and sponsoring companies! Yes, that’s a lot of ‘vibrant’! Obviously, the child-inventors know the Dream Machine they’ve been working on with their team. But then they get to discover the work of all the other...
While lots of precious impact is often unmeasurable, we still regularly involve our stakeholders in surveys. MyMachine Flanders & Brussels (Belgium), has recently conducted a survey with the participating university students. 100% of the university students participated, coming from different faculties like Digital Arts & Entertainment, Industrial Product Design, Mechanical Engineering, Teacher Training, Communication Sciences,...
From the start of MyMachine until today, we have always found it important to have a good, strong relationship with the industry and the public. MyMachine Flanders & Brussels (Belgium) has been picked up by two magazines lately, each of them writing a multi-page article on the impact created by MyMachine. SAI is a Belgian...
The metropolitan area of Liège (Belgium, Europe), with 1.1 Million inhabitants, has developed a roadmap for the future. And MyMachine is part of it! The objective of Liège Cap 2030! is to identify strategic priorities and structure projects to be implemented by 2030. Based on an in-depth diagnosis, the decision has been made to make...
From Primary School Students of course! A new school year has started in Belgium. A couple of weeks in, this means that ideation starts for sourcing new Dream Machines! MyMachine Liège has launched the participating university students to go into the primary class with the open-ended question: “What Is Your Dream Machine?”. Anything goes, as...
“At our elementary school, we try to give our students every opportunity to grow academically and socially-emotionally. Children with autism spectrum disorder and behavioural problems need a safe learning environment to grow and break through the resistance to school work. Learning to work together with different age groups, discovering their talents and coming into contact...
This excellent brand new video in French, is made by MyMachine Liège (Belgium). You’re taken on a tour by an elementary school child who explains beautifully the three steps of the MyMachine methodology. All of which is captured with authentic footage taken from past year’s run of MyMachine Liège. Thank you so much to our...
Collaboration in real-life. Not in textbooks. A lot happens when you co-create: creativity sparks at the beginning, and perseverance gets you through the most challenging moments of going from idea to concept to working prototype. That’s how it looks when hundreds of students and educators in primary, secondary and higher education co-create Dream Machines. In...
MyMachine Liège is building the working prototypes! The 3 steps in MyMachine are not divided. Students from primary, vocational/technical secondary, and university level co-create the Dream Machines! Here’s a great example of that from MyMachine Liège (Belgium). Last week, the technical secondary school l’Athénée Royal Princesse Elizabeth organised a workshop for the primary school children....
We are thrilled to announce our partnership with the Belgian Pulse Foundation. Pulse Foundation is founded by influential European entrepreneurial families. The chair of the Pulse Foundation is Count Tanguy du Monceau. The Pulse Foundation brings together families of entrepreneurs who share the same vision: through the jobs and added value it creates, through the innovation...
PXL university in Belgium opens the doors for the MyMachine participants! Using functional models, the interdisciplinary student teams of the university presented the final concepts of the Dream Machines to primary school students with whom they have been working since the beginning of October 2022. Which STEM principles are incorporated in the Shoe-Wash, the automatic...
Right before the winter break, something amazing happened in Liège, Belgium! The Work-In-Progress Event by MyMachine Liège invited the Primary School Students to visit the university. As inventors, they are the customers to cater. This event invites these demanding and brutally honest customers to giving feedback on the designs elaborated by the University Students. On...
A brand new MyMachine Cycle just took off in Liège, Belgium (Europe). Students from Helmo Gramme University have entered primary classes to ask the children our open-ended question: “What Is Your Dream Machine?”. What happens next is magic! Yet again, the children have invented a myriad of Dream Machines! It is appealing to see so...
A couple of weeks after the new school year has started in schools in Belgium, is the perfect time for the new MyMachine Flandres & Brussels cycle to kick off. Here are some pictures of the first primary school this year to host university students in their class. These Digital Arts & Entertainment students from...
Ever wondered how it feels to be a student or an educator involved in MyMachine? Here’s your chance of getting a taste of it! The Indiana Chapter of MyMachine USA has delivered the result of a full year’s creative co-creation: 4 Dream Machines have been invented, conceptualised and built! In this very first cycle, over...
Imagine sitting in the class, and the teacher is asking you a question, but you don’t feel like answering it. Now, we have the solution: this Dream Machine is called “Willy”. Push the button, and it randomly points to one of your peers in class who needs to answer the question in your place! In...
Yesterday evening was the grand opening of Design Fest Gent. MyMachine Flanders & Brussels (Belgium) is proud to be part of the exhibition “Be Wild, Act & Change”! Design Fest Gent, a new biennial 10-day international festival that offers designers space to present their ground-breaking ideas. The festival demonstrates what design can (and indeed should)...
In June, all involved students visited the MyMachine Liège exhibition (Belgium), showcasing the drawings, and of course the working prototypes of the elaborated dream machines. But what a thrill, as they were now able to visit the exhibition for a second time. This time round it was part of SAMS – Salon Des Métiers de...
Each year the International Day of Peace is observed around the world on 21 September. The UN General Assembly has declared this as a day devoted to strengthening the ideals of peace, through observing 24 hours of non-violence and cease-fire. On this amazing day we thought to dive into our World-Map of Dream Machine Ideas that resonate with this...
The primary school of Warsage (Belgium) joined MyMachine Liège (Belgium) past school year with 2nd grade students. They have published their whole experience into this great webpage. It tells the story of how they lived through the adventure from ideation to the building of an actual working prototype with the help of older students. Thank...
8 minutes of tremendous creativity and collaboration. This year’s grand exhibition of MyMachine Flanders&Brussels (Belgium) was divided into separate events for each of the elaborated dream machines. These inauguration events were done at the premises of the respective primary schools. They united all participating students: primary, secondary and university level, all celebrating the result of...
What a marvellous day this was! MyMachine Liège (Belgium) just finished their very first cycle, building 6 dream machines, uniting over 160 students from many different schools in Liège. While co-creating their dream machines, all these students learned the power of creative and entrepreneurship. At the end of this cycle, the results -the original drawings,...
Creativity going global! In January we launched our MyMachine DreamsDrop Campaign 2021 to Primary School Teachers around the globe. Students from 21 countries (Morocco, South Africa, Kenya, Mozambique, India, Vietnam, Turkey, Armenia, Australia, New Zealand, Cyprus, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Italy, Poland, Canada, Usa, Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia) uploaded their dream machine! We picked 39 ideas (from all continents) and connected these to university students at the School of Industrial Product Design at Howest University...
The first 2 Dream Machines of MyMachine Flanders & Brussels (Belgium) are delivered to the primary schools. This video reveals the inauguration of the Flying Sleeping Bag 😃 or better known as The-making-going-to-sleep-so-much-fun-machine! Amazing feedback in the interviews with primary, secondary, and university students as well as educators and business people; all explaining what MyMachine...
University students Ruben and Charles presenting the status of their work within the framework of MyMachine Flanders and Brussels (Belgium). They made this short video to be shown to the child-inventors in the primary classroom. In this video Ruben and Charles explain the status of the concept they are working on, based upon the invention...
Last week, creativity was booming again in Belgium. University students went into the primary classrooms to connect with their ‘customers’. And to find out what dream machines they invent and why they specifically invent this one. This time round, more than 100 primary schools across the Flanders and Brussels region of Belgium, participated with their...
The city of Kortrijk (Belgium) has a new beautiful shopwindow free of evil ghosts! myBOO is shining in this Korner-shopwindow right in the city center of Kortrijk. Korner is a business incubator antenna that belongs to Hangar-K, the new and huge business incubator in town. The shopwindow is designed by Atelier Pierre Junior in collaboration...
Every year the King Baudouin Foundation organises a fundraiser for its Community Foundation West-Flanders (home to MyMachine co-founder Jan Despiegelaere). As has been the case in one of the previous editions a couple of years back, MyMachine Flanders & Brussels was highlighted as an example of how an education approach can add to the community...
The 5th grade primary school students at the Stedelijke Basisschool Zuid in Harelbeke (Belgium) invented a machine to create their own teddy bears. That is because they can’t find the ones they love in existing shops and moreover they dreamed of unique ones. Tijn Veraghert Industrial Product Design student at Howest University (Kortrijk, Belgium) created in collaboration...
It is with tremendous pleasure that we can share that a new MyMachine Chapter will start: MyMachine Liège. Liège is a part of the French speaking part of Belgium (La Wallonie; The Walloon Region), to the east of the country, bordering with The Netherlands, Germany and Luxembourg. We have signed a contract with Basse-Meuse Développement,...
STEP 1: MEXICO The primary school class at LIEF School in Villahermosa Mexico has invented this Dream Machine (and uploaded it to our worldmap of dream machine ideas): when you recycle plastic bottles, you receive Lego*-blocks in return. Here’s the class making drawings of their invented dream machines: This is the original drawing for Doctor...
A worldwide call to primary education schools to come up with dream machine ideas. Children from all over the world have responded and dropped their dream machine idea on the world map of MyMachine DreamsDrop. After a selection of all ideas, today, at the request of MyMachine, 100 higher education students Industrial Product Design at...
Our book What Is Your Dream Machine? How Children Change Education Worldwide is now also on sale in bookshops across Belgium. Standaard Boekhandel is the biggest bookshop-company with 183 shops across the country. We are proud that this market-leader has shown interest in our book and has decided to distribute it though their shops in...
Yes! New Dream Machine Ideas have been created in MyMachine Flanders & Brussels (Belgium)! From the city of Bruges (West) to the city of Maaseik (East) primary schools have been exposed to an extreme high dose of creativity. Thanks to the expert guiding of higher education students from Howest University of Applied Sciences and PXL...
Today we had the pleasure of launching our book What Is Your Dream Machine? How Children Change Education Worldwide in Portugal. We were honoured with the invitation of FOLIO, the International Literature Festival who hosted the event. FOLIO invited Miguel Silvestre – CEO Technology Park Obidos (Portugal) to moderate the talk. Joining the panel was...
MyMachine kick-off for educators from primary and secondary education and the higher education students: it’s all about planning, to-do lists, getting to know each other. But most of all: learning to see MyMachine through the eyes of the primary school children. Which means: starting from a blank sheet of paper: doing something that no-one has done...
Tuesday June 25th was MyMachine Flanders and Brussels VIP day: all participating students from elementary schools and university students from Howest University of Applied Sciences and PXL University of Applied Sciences gathered at Belvue Museum downtown Brussels, for a whole day of discovering the working prototypes. Here’s already a short video giving an impression on...
On Tuesday June 25th, all participating schools from Flanders and Brussels will show up at 10:30am in downtown Brussels. All working prototypes will be on display to be admired and tested! The MyMachine Flanders & Brussels 2019 Exhibition will take place at Belvue Museum, next to the royal palace. At the occasion of their visit...
Magali Veramme, alumna MyMachine: “In retrospect, I now refer to my first job as MyMachine Extra-Large: I need to listen to a strict, very demanding customer and make it happen, despite budget limitations and deadlines. Yes, exactly like MyMachine!”. Read the full story in our brand new book: What Is Your Dream Machine? How Children...
Maja is the annual magazine published by The Young Academy. The most recent edition (number 5) runs an article on MyMachine, expressing the need for nurturing creativity and a ‘we can do that’ approach with the youth in Belgium. The Young Academy, part of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences & Arts, is...
The international ProtoTyping trade fair is designed for everyone in the field of product development. The focus is on the whole design process, from the original idea through to setting up a business model and actual production in a pilot run or small series. You will find companies and research centres here with the technologies, materials, tools &...
What would you think of a machine to invent new animal species? Or a machine that enables you to talk to your cuddles? Or would you prefer the me-doubler that would go to school in stead of you? Lot’s of brilliant ideas, yes every idea is brilliant, from the elementary school children in this classroom...
Here are some of the teachers who will guide their inventors and makers through the MyMachine process, starting next week. During the bootcamps in Howest University (Kortrijk) and PXL University (Hasselt) the teams from higher, lower and secondary got to know each other. The higher education students took all of them on a tour guide...
Belgian media company ZIGO interviewed one of our three co-founders at MyMachine. ZIGO is not just another media company. Its baseline is “Makes Optimism Easy” and brings the story of people (they call them pioneers) who do not accept the status quo and take positive action to better our society. It is therefore a great...
250 top business leaders from the West Flemish region in Belgium gathering for lunch at The Hotel in Brussels. It was a big honour for us to be invited to present MyMachine at this occasion. It was again heart warming to receive this much positive feedback from business leaders. Looking back at the very start,...
Today we were honoured by the visit of an important Indian delegation from Karnataka. Dr. Ashwath Narayan is an Indian politician, member of Karnataka Legislative Assembly representing BJP from Malleshwaram constituency, Bangalore, Karnataka. He is often credited with Malleshwaram witnessing massive transformation in several sectors including healthcare, welfare, education, sports, infrastructure and several others under his leadership. With a focus on education, Dr. Ashwath Narayan...
Brussels, Belgium (Europe). 23 June 2016. 11AM. 450 Children discover and test the elaborated dream machines.
Yesterday was a great day for MyMachine Belgium. Hundreds of children visited the “inventor-school” (Howest University of Applied Sciences – Industrial Design Center) to assess the works of the product and game design students. At this Work-In-Progress event all children inventors give honest feedback about the elaboration of the concepts of their dream machine. This...
The ZOMBIE machine is the idea that the children in Slovenia and Belgium want to see realized as a working prototype. This machine can make real zombies that protect you and help you doing things at home (if you ask them friendly). Has this anything do to with the Halloween period? One thing’s for sure: they...
Kick off of a new MyMachine cycle by the Howest students Digital Arts & Entertainment and the 5th grade of the Elementary School Edugo St. Vincentius. This part of the MyMachine Flanders (Belgium) cycle is about translating the idea into a game. Some ingredients for the game: a love-machine that unites separated parents by using brain...
Today, MyMachine Óbidos is visiting MyMachine Global in the city of Kortrijk, Belgium. Miguel Silvestre who is running MyMachine Óbidos together with Ana Sofia Godinho, brought with him a group of Portuguese Mayors. Left: Miguel Silvestre, MyMachine Óbidos Middle: Piet Grymonprez, Co-Founder MyMachine Right: Telmo Faria, former Mayor of Óbidos It...
Click here for the Dutch Documentary by Regional Television TV OOST: children/inventors from the Belgian elementary school discovering, at the technical high school, their working prototype: the Disease-Vacuum-Cleaner. This is one of the dream machines that will be on display at the Grand MyMachine Flanders Exhibition, opening June 18th in the City of Kortrijk. Join us...
The MyMachine Flanders (Belgium) Grand Exhibition will take place 18-28 June 2015 at the Buda Arts Center in the City of Kortrijk. This Grand Exhibition is the final chapter of the MyMachine Flanders (Belgium) cycle 2014-2015. In this cycle more than 600 pupils and students from 21 different schools in Flanders participated. 18 June is...
Last week, MyMachine Belgium was on national television (VRT). MyMachine was a guest in the late night talk show called Bart & Siska. Here’s the link where you can watch MyMachine on the show (Dutch).
Tonight in the brand new late night talkshow Bart & Siska on VRT (National Television), Charlotte will present her very own dream machine. Charlotte participated in MyMachine Belgium 6 years ago. Now she’s 12 years old and she will look back at the machine she invented when she was in de first grade of the...
The final countdown…with some help from the Slovenian MyMachine team. Tomorrow invasion of 400 children who come to see their dream machines, we’re ready!
Tuesday 16 december Howest University of Applied Sciences is hosting the MyMachine Work-In-Progress again. 400 children will visit the Howest Industrial Product Design Students to discuss the progress they made, developing a product concept out of the drawings of their dream machines. The Howest students are working hard to finish the last preparations.
80 children from an elementary school in Belgium tested their ‘time travel machine’, the result of a cooperation between schools and organizations in Belgium/Flanders and South Africa. Next week the South African children will have their final show!
MyMachine Belgium and MyMachine Slovenia are in Berlin (Germany) today at the 20th edition of the International Online Educa Conference, bringing new technology to the educational stage. More than 40 new machines were invented, this time by grown-ups from all over the world: ranging from a Tie-Shoe-Machine, the Pairing-Single-Socks-Machine, the Machine-That-Can-Sculpt-And-Cave-An-Image to the Machine-To-Make-Me-Younger, the...
For the next two days, the city of Kortrijk (Belgium) is the world capitol of creativity, hosting the 2014 edition of the Creativity World Forum. We were happy to be invited at the VIP Opening Event to present MyMachine on stage. A big thank you to City of Kortrijk and Flanders DC. We wish...
The Belgian Queen Paola Foundation is dedicated to support the integration and education of youth. The Belgian Dirk Frimout Foundation, established by Dirk Frimout the first Belgian astronaut, is dedicated to support scientific knowledge of earth and space. Both foundations collaborate to organise a yearly contest, aiming at pupils from Belgian secondary schools, that elaborate...
MyMachine Belgium is starting up this academic year. 11 elementary schools, 10 vocational schools and 90 Howest University of Applied Sciences students Industrial Product Design and Digital Arts & Entertainment. Here we go! Find out more on www.mymachinevlaanderen.be
By 2020 Flanders has the ambition to be one of the top five regions of Europe. To realize this ambition, it must invest in knowlegde and talents. Although many companies and research institutes are active in the domain of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), there is a gowing lack of young people studying exact...
The exhibition and Design for Impact-lecture during the ‘Design Week 2013′ highlighted the final part of the North-South-pilot. MyMachine produced a lot of enthusiasm amongst the visitors. MyMachine is looking back to a successful pilot year. ‘MyMachine 1 +1 = 3’ – a spin-off of the basic MyMachine concept – allowed us to implement the MyMachine methodology for the first time outside the country’s borders. We found MyMachine to be as attractive and inspiring for...
June 6, 2013 was a big day for all 259 pupils of OLVO Heist (Belgium). They welcomed Scrappy, the recycling robot at school. This dream machine came to life thanks to a cross-border co-operation between the three educational levels and organizations in Flanders and South Africa. The MyMachine team was able to introduce a first...
The Nyrstar Foundation awards the 2012-2013 grant to the new MyMachine North-South project. With childlike imagination as a starting point, MyMachine aims to leverage its unique methodology to promote creativity and entrepreneurship in education in developing countries. The project is a cross-border cooperation between schools and organisations in Flanders, Belgium and in developing countries. The pilot...
On Sept 25th 2012, children from the 6th grade collected information about South Africa (climate, educational system, housing, …) in order to gain insight in the living environment of their peers. What kind of dream machine would they invent for their peers to make their lives easier or simple more fun? What do you think...
From June 22nd to July 1st 2012 the MyMachine grand exhibition took place in Kortrijk, West Flanders. On Thursday 28th 250 inventors enjoyed ‘The Great MyMachine Show’, a spectacle in which the participation of the audience was important. The dream machines were tested and approved. But the little inventors were the real eyecatchers of the...
Great news! The pupils from technical secondary schools have succeeded to realise the dreams of many children ! Recently they invited the little inventors to admire and, what’s more important, to test their dream machines. Inventors, designers and builders, all of them were present. The eyes of the children were shining. When they saw their machines...
In March 2012, Bachelor students from the Howest Network Economy (Belgium) visited primary schools throughout Flanders with a clear mission. With a fun approach, they wanted to introduce the children to different aspects of entrepreneurship. Children learned to think about potential users (and buyers) of their dream machines. They also imagined being part of the...
In the workstations of the 8 technical secondary high schools (Belgium) the dream machines become reality. Some of the schools were visited by the inventors. The fantasy of the children was obviously triggered when they were asked to paint their own ‘Flying World Explorer’.
Flanders Today is a weekly English-language newspaper covering news, business, arts and culture in Brussels and Flanders. MyMachine is proud to be on the cover of Flanders Today.
Since the beginning of this school year Howest University of Applied Sciences students product design have worked hard to conceptualise the children’s ideas into concepts of dream machines. Now about 250 pupils from 8 technical secundary schools involved in the project (Belgium) have 5 months to translate their techical drawings into real working prototypes of the...
On Sunday November 20th 2011, the first TEDx Youth Flanders event will take place in the city of Antwerp (Belgium, Europe). This date is not just a date. It has been chosen, because on this day, 20 years ago, the United Nations have declared the 20th of November as the Universial Children’s Day. The whole...
Brussels Innova, is a 4000 m² fair with exhibitors from 20 different countries, 4000 visitors and 500 innovations. This year we celebrate the 60th edition of this fair. We’re very proud to be able to present MyMachine on Friday November 18th 2011, to a public ranging from entrepreneurs to inventors! More on Brussels Innova here.
On the 27th of October 2011, Howest University of Applied Sciences Digital Arts & Entertainment students, are awarded at the Innovation Award in the category Image & ICT for their brilliant first MyMachine-game, called ‘The inventors’.These students created and designed a 3D-computergame in which, the main character 12 year old Kiddo, helps making a better world...
On 13th and 14th of October 2011, 200 children from 9 different elementary schools in Belgium, started creating their own dream machines. They invented, described and made drawings of their own dream machine. Howest University of Applied Sciences Industrial Design students helped them out. In some elementary schools, the pupils of technical high schools joined as...
Saturday 24th of September, MyMachine was on stage on the TEDx Flanders event in the Flemish Opera in Antwerp (Belgium). TED is an American event-format that presents new ideas, products and concepts. Some of these TED Talks become a hype on the internet, like the 2006 TED-Talk by Sir Ken Robinson on ‘Do schools kill creativity?’,...
Early October 2010, Luc Vandewalle (chairman of MyMachine) and Jan Despiegelaere (co-founder of MyMachine) got the chance by the Community Foundation of West-Flanders, to join the gala dinner of the Supporting Council of West-Flanders in the city of Ostend (Belgium). At this occasion, they presented MyMachine to Belgian prins Filip and prinses Mathilde (now King and...
