A Volunteer’s Story

I arrived at Bonner Primary School with the team of the Institute of Imagination just before the doors opened, the grey morning at Mile End in East London still settling over the playground. Inside, the hall looked nothing like a school hall, but more like a tiny space station waiting for its crew. Moon buggies lined the tables. A wind tunnel hummed in the corner. Volunteers ran quick tests on VR headsets, and someone stuck up a sign for the “Bonner Alien Café.”

By ten o’clock, the place was full. Children tugging at their parents’ coats, parents scanning the room, volunteers trying to hold the edges of the universe together. Workshops always start with a slow trickle, but this one exploded straight into orbit.

The first conversations

As a volunteer, I spent the morning helping families move between stations. At the coding table, I met a young volunteer who had only just moved to London.

“I searched online,” she told me. “I wanted to join an art-active team” She said she hesitated at first, unsure if she had enough experience. Then she smiled “But you just book it, show up, and everyone helps you. Just be yourself.”

That set the tone for the whole day, people finding their way in and finding that they belonged.

Children taking flight

The moon buggy table was the loudest thing in the room. I knelt down beside a boy who had been testing his design for nearly an hour, unheard of in his mum’s words.

“He doesn’t focus like this usually,” she told me. “If we tried this at home, we’d get ten minutes. Here, he’s been on that floor for an hour. I’m amazed.”

Across the hall, a boy named Aidan pulled off the VR headset, cheeks flushed.

“What was the best thing today?” I asked. “The VR!” he shouted. “I was flying in space!”

Parents finding space, too

One mum told me she only came because another parent sent a WhatsApp video that morning: “On the flyer it’s hard to tell what the event actually is. But the video… the room looked amazing.”

For her, the value was the unstructured space. “So much of their learning is structured. Here, [my kid] can choose. I kept wanting to give her input while she built her rocket, but she just needed to do it herself.”

Another mum said it gave her son freedom he doesn’t always have:

“He’s not great at joining in. But today, because he could choose, he joined in everything.”

I watched families drift between coding, animation, rocket-building, and the Alien Café. Each table had its own rhythm of concentration, laughter and tiny arguments about which button to press next. It was the kind of scene that feels ordinary and extraordinary at the same time.

What imagination meant, in their own words

One of our volunteers shared “Imagination is freedom of expression. These kids… they’re the next generation. They can build the world to be amazing.”

Another parent told me: “We limit ourselves a lot. Kids show us what happens when you don’t.” And my favourite line of the day came from the volunteer who had just moved to London: “Imagination for me is no limit. Not just painting or singing… everything. You can explore anything.”

A community stitched together by play

By the time the Alien Café ran out of snacks and the VR queue finally quietened, families were still wandering the room, reluctant to leave. Several told me they expected to stay for half an hour but ended up staying two.

One parent laughed as she put on her coat:
“Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect. But this has been really fun. We’ll definitely come again.”

That’s the magic of days like this. There’s no performance or pressure. Just people discovering what they can build, imagine and share when they’re given permission to play.

“Watching the event go from a simple idea to a hall buzzing with families building and exploring was amazing to see. We collaborated with a team of children from the school, who chose to design and deliver this event for their families and local community, known as our PlayMakers and they were the real visionaries. It was amazing to see the pride in their faces as they led their friends to the VR room they had dreamt up or showed their families an alien invasion stop frame animation that they had created.
What surprised me most was how deep their sense of ownership ran. They didn't just come up with great ideas; they took on real responsibility, building and running their own Bonner Alien Cafe to raise money for the school. Their vision, to make every family feel 'welcomed', 'astonished' and 'curious', was brought to life perfectly.”
Jennifer Luk | Head of Experience at the Institute of Imagination

Leaving the space station

When the hall emptied, the room looked different. Paper rockets under chairs. A discarded alien eye on the floor. A trail of soft drink cups marching toward the bin. The beautiful aftermath of imagination at work. As I wiped down a table, I thought about what one parent said when I asked why imagination matters: “Because it gives us opportunities. We lose that as adults. Kids remind us.”

Saving Planet Bonner was a reminder that imagination is a muscle, and days like this are how we keep it alive.

“We limit ourselves a lot. Kids show us what happens when you don’t.” Says mum after the Institute of Imagination landed at Bonner Primary School in East London.