Power Up is a digitally inclusive creative learning project developed by C&T to support people who are currently excluded from digital culture to build confidence, skills, and agency through creativity. Designed for learning-disabled adults, young people, and community groups with limited access to digital tools, Power Up reframes digital skills not as abstract competencies but as practical, social, and creative acts.
At the heart of the project is Prospero, C&T’s participatory digital platform. Power Up uses a clear, gamified journey that moves participants from games and creative prompts, to simple tasks, to uploading and sharing digital outputs, and finally to celebration and recognition. This structure reduces anxiety, supports step-by-step learning, and enables participants to see themselves as capable digital creators rather than passive users of technology.
Power Up aligns closely with the UK’s Essential Digital Skills Framework, embedding core skills such as communicating online, creating and sharing content, managing information, and staying safe online. These skills are developed through applied theatre, storytelling, video, image-making, and collaborative play. Sessions are co-designed with participants and delivery partners, ensuring activities are accessible, relevant, and rooted in lived experience.
Crucially, Power Up is not a one-off intervention. It is designed to be scalable and adaptable across different communities and settings, including education providers, arts organisations, and community groups. Local facilitators are supported through training and resources, enabling the approach to be sustained beyond the life of the project.
Power Up reflects C&T’s long-standing commitment to digital inclusion, accessibility, and creative agency. By combining applied arts practice with robust digital infrastructure, the project creates supportive pathways into digital life, ensuring that those most often left out of digital innovation are not only included, but centred.
Funded by the UK Government’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology
