Matthew Atherfold
STEM · Charity · Future Academy- 04

The next generation
isn't waiting.
Neither am I.

Students at Future Academy build camp
The story- 01

Founded to close the gap between knowing and doing.

Most organisations know AI matters. Few know how to turn that awareness into real capability. Slide decks and e-learning create awareness, not ability, people learn when they build something real.

I founded Future Academy in summer 2025 to prove a working model of applied AI education. We launched at Microsoft Ireland, where teams of teenagers used AI tools to build and pitch real ideas in a single day.

By autumn, schools were asking us to bring it to them. We delivered to 180+ Transition Year students at St Gerard's. By early 2026 we'd partnered with Turnua to scale across Ireland and connect Kildare businesses with student innovation teams.

Future Academy
Future Academy
Future Academy
The model- 02

One-day build camp. Ideate → Build → Pitch → Launch.

01

Ideate

Problems first. Real ones. Pulled from students' own lives.

02

Build

Working prototypes using modern AI tools - Lovable, productivity suites, design tools.

03

Pitch

Teams pitch to their entire year group. Live judging, live results.

04

Launch

Winning teams take home domain names, mentorship and a path forward.

Recent report-outs- 03

Two days. Eight teams. Eight working prototypes.

01Platform Pizza · Commerce Day

Four teams. One live brief from a real restaurant.

April 2026

Teen teams (13–17) tackled a live brief from Platform Pizza: find and fix a real operational problem in a single day. Three teams independently converged on booking-gap optimisation — the revenue lost to 30–45 minute “dead zones” between reservations — and built distinct solutions: fixed time-slot booking, AI dynamic pricing, and a visual-floor-plan reservation tool. A fourth team tackled kitchen overload from delivery orders with a heated-locker pickup system.

4 teams · 7-step process · 4 working prototypes · 1 day

02Tourism Ireland · Sustainability Day

Make sustainable travel in Ireland fun, findable and rewarding.

April 2026

Four teen teams answered a live brief on greener tourism. Each shipped a working prototype in under six hours — a budget-first family planner with spin-the-wheel rewards (Mindful Miles), a points-and-leaderboard rewards platform aimed at international tourists (LIT), an A–F eco-rated booking layer with redeemable points, and an AI eco-companion (Bo) that gamifies low-carbon transport across Ireland (EcoÉire).

4 teams · 7-step process · 4 working prototypes · 1 day

Partnership · Lovable- 04

How we earned a Lovable partnership.

Future Academy didn't pitch Lovable. We used it, in front of parents, teachers, school leaders and Microsoft Ireland, and the results spoke first.

  • 01Teens shipped real products in a single day. Five teams used Lovable to take an idea from blank page to working prototype, pitched live to their full year group with judges, scoring and prizes.
  • 02180+ Transition Year students at St Gerard's. An unmodified vibe-coding curriculum scaled from a Microsoft Ireland launch event into a full school programme inside one term.
  • 03A repeatable model, not a one-off demo. Build Camp, SMB diagnostics and the Turnua sponsor pipeline all run on the same engine, Lovable as the tool students, businesses and educators actually build with.
  • 04Endorsement from the room that mattered. Microsoft, Enterprise Ireland and school leaders publicly backed the programme, giving Lovable a credible, education-led reference customer in Ireland.

The partnership followed the proof. That order matters.

Three delivery tracks- 05

Education institutes.

Build Camps and applied labs for second-level and university students. Built with St Gerard's, scaled with Turnua.

SMBs.

AI Maturity diagnostic across 8 dimensions, plus applied workshops on AI, automation and digital tools.

Enterprise.

Applied upskilling and enablement programmes for middle management and executive audiences.

Charity & community- 06
Charity run with kids

Show up. Do the work.

From charity runs with the kids to volunteer mentoring in schools, the through-line is the same: don't talk about it, do it. Future Academy started as side-project volunteering in local classrooms. It only became a programme because the demand outgrew the spare time.

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