Youth Sector Innovation Incubator
Between October 2024 and March 2025, the CAST and NCS Youth Sector Innovation Incubator brought together youth organisations, digital experts, and young people to reimagine youth services through co-creation and user-centred design.
Three incubator teams each addressed a distinct challenge, with the shared goal of developing innovative digital solutions to strengthen social cohesion among young people.
Each team—comprising youth organisations, digital specialists and, crucially, young people—designed a new tool grounded in the real needs and lived experiences of 15–17-year-olds.
Below, we outline the three challenges and the resulting products. You can find more about the programme’s approach, outcomes, and key lessons in the Project Hub. We also share cross-cutting insights into young people's needs, combining research and practical learning from all three project teams.
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Incubator 1
Challenge: Creating live online experiences for young people that are hesitant about attending in-person activities
Team: Yalla, All Star, FotoNow CIC and Groundwork NE & Cumbria
Following extensive discovery and co-creation, this group designed Youth Voice: a tool to gather young people’s opinions and preferences so that youth workers can design activities and experiences that meet their varied needs and spark their interest.
You can check out this team’s resources, where they outline what they achieved at each stage of the design phase, on the Project Hub.
Incubator 2
Challenge: Supporting young people to better understand and influence how they engage with generative AI
Team: Neontribe, Warrington Youth Zone, The Politics Project and Beats Bus
This group developed Real Chat AI: a tool that supports young people to learn how to use generative AI, while they use it. It also provides tips for youth group leaders on facilitating sessions using the tool.
Access this team’s resources, where they outline what they achieved at each stage of the design phase, on the Project Hub.
Incubator 3
Challenge 3: Supporting young people’s post-programme self-reflection and continued practice
Team: Super Being Labs, Rotherham United Community Trust, UK S Futures, Shropshire Youth Support Trust
This third group created Brilliance: a tool that uses AI to support and encourage young people to reflect on what they’ve achieved and learnt during programmes, and more generally, in their day to day life.
Check out this team’s resources, where they outline what they achieved at each stage of the design phase, on the Project Hub.
The approach
The Youth Sector Innovation Incubator programme followed a three step approach to structure the design process:
The programme was heavily inspired by our Fuse programme, which followed the same design approach and brings together people with different expertise and experiences to fully understand a challenge and design to solve real user needs.
Throughout the programme, participants took part in the following activities:
- Research – reading, interviews with young people, mapping, workshops, as a way to ask questions, discover knowledge, refine ideas, scope out potential
- Identifying and building partnerships to develop community tech
- Spending time consulting with different experts
- Prototyping, testing and experimenting
You can learn more about the programme's outcomes on the Project Hub.
Get in touch
This programme has now concluded. If you're interested in learning more about any of the products or getting involved in working collectively to scale them across the UK, we'd love to hear from you. Get in touch with [email protected].
If the Incubator programme model sounds like something you'd be interested in running, please contact [email protected] to discuss.