Mission statement
We create and support projects which bring communities and countries together. Working with playgroups and parliaments, steel pans and sports clubs, Big Ideas makes lasting change locally, nationally and globally. Our work is creative and dynamic with excellence at the heart of everything we do.
Big Ideas has a Limited Company [9426254] and Community Interest Company [10535798].
Be part of something big
We believe in celebrating and sharing amazing community projects at special public events and with the media. Here’s how we tell your story.
Our Football Remembers WWII project was featured on BBC Breakfast on 5 February 2020.
A partnership with the Premier League through their Education Programmes, Football Remembers WWII brings together young players with former players who are also World War II veterans.
There will be lots more to follow as this year marks 75 years since the end of WWII.
To get the ball rolling, BBC Breakfast invited Watford FC Academy to come back to Manchester where they had filmed with former player and WW2 veteran Tony Collins. Tony was the first manager of black heritage in the Football League.
In 2018, Dele Alli, Kieran Trippier and Danny Rose launched Tull100, our project to commemorate and celebrate Walter Tull, a professional footballer and the first officer of black heritage in the British Army to lead his men in battle.
The BBC came along and filmed the players as part of their report on the centenary of Walter Tull’s death during the Second Battle of the Somme in March 1918.
More than 5000 people took part in the Tull100 project. Schools, community groups, football club academies and an adult dance group for people with disabilities were inspired by Walter Tull’s story and created diverse projects to commemorate him.
As part of The Unremembered project, we curated an exhibition of wreaths and held a reception to celebrate with the many community groups who made them. The event was generously hosted and supported by the National Army Museum (NAM).
The reception gave everyone the opportunity to view the many creative wreaths on display and read about what inspired each group to make them.
A number of community groups that made Unremembered wreaths attended the event including Age UK Islington, West Riding Ruggers, Black Heritage Group and Hackney Mosaic Group.
To launch our campaign Ringing Remembers in partnership with the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers, BBC Breakfast visited bell ringers in Edington Priory and spoke to Alan Regin, one of the world’s leading Ringers.
To mark the final year of the First World War centenary, the project sought to recruit 1400 new bellringers in memory of the 1400 bellringers who lost their lives during the First World War, and to keep this traditional British art alive.
HRH The Duke of Cambridge visited the local cemetery in Brent in November 2016 to see how schools and community groups had come together to discover local war graves through the Living Memory project.
Big Ideas ran the project in partnership with the Commonwealth War Graves Commission.
Local steel pan band, St Michael’s Youth Project, played the Last Post on steel pans.
Armistice 100
Unremembered wreaths were carried in the People’s Procession to mark the centenary of the end of WWI. The unique handmade wreaths commemorated the labourers of the war. It is a global story and groups championed this diverse history which brought the contributions of Chinese, Kenyan, South Africa, India, Canadian and British labourers to the forefront. The wreaths were also displayed at the National Army Museum and in the Home Office building. During the People’s Procession, Unremembered groups were interviewed live on the BBC.