Jason West

Jason West is the architect and Chief Executive of the Educational Wealth Fund but started his career working for the British Trust for Conservation Volunteers. Here, Jason observed the narrow age, ethnic and socioeconomic background of those involved with community action, sparking his mission to widen engagement between individuals, communities and the environment – this would become a thread woven deeply into the fabric of his working life. In 2008 Jason trained as a Science Teacher and worked at a comprehensive state school where he was observed to be an ‘outstanding teacher’ with a flair for empowering young people to connect with the natural world. Jason went on to lead his science department to achieve the school’s first-ever positive value-added results – across all three sciences. In 2013, in collaboration with the Science Museum London, he designed a project to connect climate change to a wider audience. His Nerf Gun World Art Project united six schools and over 4,500 students, parents and teachers in creating a collaborative work of art which showed how our individual actions contribute to the ‘bigger picture’. The project won awards for; Most Innovative Project and Widest Audience Reached and culminated in the artwork being exhibited in science museums across the U.K. In 2017 he published the vision and intellectual framework for the Educational Wealth Fund, a grant making permanent endowment fund to help comprehensive schools become the most wondrous and inspiring of all human places. The EWF has five carefully chosen funding themes: The Creative Arts, Sustainability, Peace, Local Culture and Mental Health. Since the publication of its vision the EWF has attracted wide support from renowned intellectuals, celebrities, Nobel Prize winners, former presidents of the Royal Society, as well as world-renowned economists, authors and musicians. In 2018 Jason was made a Fellow of the Royal Society for the of the Arts and continues to believe that teaching is the most important job in the world. Jason has two young daughters, a degree in Natural Sciences from the Open University and a PGCE from University of Leicester.