Our Story

The Imagination Center, founded by young people and children, has turned into an association with the same children on the board of directors. The Imagination Center, where children and adults are together, works to create cultural change in education and learning.

The Imagination Center is an association whose foundations were laid in Van’s Dumlupınar Secondary School.

Emre Alettin Keskin, the founder of the Imagination Center, realizes that he is not only a teacher but also an educational designer in the classroom where he teaches for the first time. Following his curiosity as a child, Emre sees that children are also looking for their own curiosity. He questions the education system as a universal problem and why the child is not a participant in school. He thinks, “Can I change this situation by using children’s questions and curiosity?”

“Don’t be afraid to bullshit, ask questions, and be curious in order to create space,” Emre Teacher told the children. “He is establishing the Question Curiosity Library.

Children’s questions and curiosities in fields such as science, art and philosophy are collected. Thousands of questions and curiosities are categorized using the school’s fire buckets. Emre teacher decides to prepare the school curriculum according to these categories. He identifies the most asked, the most curious and the least curious. He finds curiosity partners. He reveals the curiosity statistics of the class and the school. Finally, he decides to write stories to create the curriculum.

Emre Teacher writes Kamil’s Travel Book, which travels the world with the curiosity of children.

Kamil is a character who comes to the world of 35 thousand years ago because the colors are lost in his world. Emre Teacher places the curriculum in the story he writes. A fairy tale curriculum consisting of curiosities emerges with Kamil traveling through children’s questions. As children’s curiosity increases, new characters are added to the story and the story turns into Kamil and Luna’s Travel Book.

When Kamil’s Logbook became popular within the school, Uğur Ali Yıldırım and Emre Teacher, who teach at the same school, worked with the children to design a learning model called “Ask, Explore, Produce”.

Emre Teacher, who was assigned to Gaziosmanpaşa Secondary School with the system they established and new questions in his mind, asked the children here, “How to establish a school that is not a school with the hands and contribution of children?” The question of “How to establish a school that is not a school with the hands and contribution of children?” reveals the Imagination Center.

Children identify 9 different learning spaces. One of these areas is an empty space. Children who want to contribute to the school build the first Imagination Center with their own productions and ideas. Inside the Imagination Center, a place called AstroLibrary is created with space books. Since it is financially difficult to access space books, children write hundreds of books. Everything from cleaning and painting and whitewashing to the three-dimensional printer is designed by the children.

The teacher’s desk is dismantled by children and turned into a stand for a 3D printer. With the removal of the teacher’s desk, the distance between children and their teachers disappears. The Imagination Center becomes a space where children produce and contribute to the school. Later, the children influence other children in the same neighborhood with their stories. The Imagination Center is being established by students in two more schools in Gaziosmanpaşa.

Teacher Emre and Teacher Uğur share their work with their friends and eagerly await the results. Teachers all over Turkey are starting to experiment with the “Ask, Explore, Produce” model.

From Tokat to Zonguldak, teachers are starting to experiment with the “Ask, Explore, Produce” model or its components. Striking stories emerge, but the story in Viranşehir, Şanlıurfa encourages Teacher Emre and Teacher Uğur to reach out to the whole of Turkey. In a school in Viranşehir, students produce with the “Ask, Discover, Produce” model and decide to exhibit what they produce. Those who don’t want the exhibition to be opened in the school stone the productions! The solution the children find to this situation is proof of what happens when you empower children; they collect the stones thrown at their works and paint them. They make the exhibition with these stones.

The work attracts the attention of universities and institutions and the adventure of social entrepreneurship begins.

Emre Öğretmen realizes that he is actually a social entrepreneur. The Imagination Center wins the grant of İmece Social Innovation Platform. Afterwards, he started to make a name for himself in national and international social entrepreneurship circles with the solutions he developed in the field of education. His journey continues with TEDX talks, Darüşşafaka Talks and New Generation Learning events. Many different activities such as child-oriented design of city squares with Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, sustainability workshops with different institutions, content producer teacher training for the Ministry of National Education’s EBA platform, Child to Child Academy with Akbank Tosla Volunteers are carried out.

A Seed Team is formed with children who have passed through the Imagination Center.

The Tohum Team includes children who give speeches at TedX, publish self-written books, design textiles, make music albums, lead other communities, design technology projects and many more. Tohum Team is designing the Child to Child Academy project to say to the children in our country, “Dare to wonder and dare to say you can do it.” The Child to Child Academy reaches 419 children from 55 different cities with 19 different workshops. Following the Child to Child Academy, Tohum Team designs the Child to Adult Academy for teachers and adults. Children want to change roles in learning. Apart from all this, the Tohum Team is involved in all institutional and official meetings of the Imagination Center. From ministerial advisors to bureaucrats, from bank management to holding companies, the Tohum Team attends all meetings where adults are present.

The Imagination Center turns into an association on March 13, 2021 with the participation of 14 adults and 35 children.

The Imagination Center, which says “For children, with children!”, is struggling to complete the number of 17 people over the age of 18 required to become an association under pandemic conditions. Emre Öğretmen became the board of directors of the association and Ecem Şafak, who has been with the Imagination Center since she was thirteen and is now eighteen, became the general secretary. Exactly as befits the Imagination Center!

With the motto “Curiosity and skills gave birth to civilizations in these lands.”, the Curiosity and Skills Movement is being launched in 2021 to create a society that is not afraid and daring to take steps.

The Imagination Center, founded by children, educators and adults who have not lost their inner child, is taking a courageous step with the Curiosity and Skill Movement. The Curiosity and Skills Movement is a journey and an invitation to create communities of curiosity and skills in learning, education, institutions and life! The discovery of curiosity and skills is a way for people with similar curiosity and skills to meet and produce together…

The Curiosity and Skills Movement aims to create a Curiosity and Skills Map of Turkey.

The Imagination Center, which works to transform the education system, curriculum and schools into a curiosity and skill-oriented structure, aims to create an exemplary education model from local to global. In a world where one third of the population is made up of children, the Center wants all public institutions, especially the Ministry of National Education, to have child counselors. It aims to establish Imagination Center in different cities as a new generation socialization and learning space.