How We Can Evolve Learning and Performance – Inspired by Sir Ken Robinson and Stephen Graham
- Brainz Magazine
- Nov 25
- 7 min read
Updated: Nov 26
Written by Graham John Morgan, Performance Mentor
Graham is a serial innovator with a unique, proven record in Football, Education, and Performance. Building on his extensive career experience, Graham is collaborating with a global leading neuroscientist, Dr Michael Merzenich, to create footballing brains, a programme of Mentored Brain Training to improve performance, mental strength, and resilience.
Evolve: A Social Impact Company is a pioneering social enterprise challenging traditional education practice by supporting the holistic development of children to improve their all-around performance. Evolve staff are embedded into schools to work mainly with disadvantaged children growing up in difficult circumstances.
"Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think." – Albert Einstein
It is essential that our education system redefines the relationship between the teaching of subjects and the learning of children to meet the demands of modern-day life. The traditional focus places emphasis on specific subjects followed by revision for academic exams. After being confined in classrooms for the year, pupils are put through a range of standardised tests at specific times of the year, the content of which is often never used again.
Surely, our children should be valued for far more than their potential exam grades.
Some of the world’s most famous and celebrated individuals have shown that true potential often only reveals itself outside the traditional, straight-jacketed academic structures of our education system. Among them is Stephen Graham, who recently reflected on his award-winning performance by saying, “This kind of thing doesn’t normally happen to a kid like me, any dream is possible.” Stephen was referring to his humble background and struggle with traditional education while growing up with the challenges of being a biracial child in 1970s Liverpool.
Stephen is far from alone. Figures such as Sir Richard Branson, Kate Winslet, Simon Cowell, Deborah Meaden, Ed Sheeran, Adele, Idris Elba, Dua Lipa, and Jake Humphrey all succeeded spectacularly despite struggling within, or rejecting, the traditional school model. Their achievements remind us that academic performance is far from the sole indicator of human potential.
Stephen’s stellar performance in the TV series Adolescence highlighted not only his talent, but the programme also illustrated some of the ways schools are failing to understand or support young people. A major problem is not encouraging or even allowing children to follow their interests and passions in school. Teachers and parents all too often fall into the trap of enforcing revision to replace their children’s hobbies, arts, and sports activities, something they are often very passionate about and will carry forward with them in life.
Sir Ken Robinson, one of the most influential voices in modern education reform, famously challenged global schooling systems for “educating people out of their creativity.” For generations, conventional education has elevated standardized testing, rigid subject boundaries, and memorisation above curiosity, emotional awareness, imagination, and individuality.
“We perform at our best when we embrace creativity, emotional depth, and embodied intelligence.” – Sir Ken Robinson
Evolve: A Social Impact Company is a multi-award-winning social enterprise that embraces this truth wholeheartedly. Their staff embody a more holistic approach to education where physical, emotional, and cognitive development are deeply interconnected, and where exam grades alone are not the ultimate measure of a child’s educational progress. Instead, the focus is on nurturing the whole individual to be ready to deal positively with the challenges and opportunities that come their way in school and beyond in life.
When systems limit potential
Sir Ken Robinson famously argued that “education systems are designed to produce university professors, not creative explorers,” nor inspiring performers, artists, entrepreneurs, or elite sportsmen and women. Stephen Graham’s early experiences illustrate this sharply. Expelled from drama school due to dyslexia and academic challenges, he found himself pushed aside by a system that privileged standard measures over personal passions, aptitudes, and interests.
But as Sir Ken often reminded us, intelligence is multifaceted. Stephen’s emotional depth, creativity, discipline, and perseverance enabled him to succeed beyond the narrow, convergent lens of academic expectation. His story reinforces what Evolve champions daily: that the holistic development of the individual is more important than pandering to the needs of an outdated academic exam regime.
How Evolve mirrors Sir Ken’s beliefs and Stephen Graham’s story
Evolve believes that optimum performance is built on a foundation created by supporting physical health, emotional health, and cognitive health. This remains true for education, health, business, sport, the arts, and life in general.
This philosophy aligns closely with Sir Ken’s holistic view of human development, one that recognises the inseparable connection between mind, body, and emotion. Stephen Graham’s life and career exemplify these pillars in practice.
What is the basis for the Evolve approach to improving performance?
Physical health
“Mens sana in corpore sano”, a healthy mind in a healthy body. – Juvenal, Roman Poet
Physical health is essential for performance in school and beyond because a healthy body directly supports a healthy brain. Regular movement, good sleep, and proper nutrition boost focus, memory, and emotional balance, making it easier to learn, concentrate, and handle challenges. Physical wellbeing also increases energy, reduces stress, and strengthens resilience, all of which help young people perform more confidently in the classroom and carry those same strengths into adulthood, work, and life.
However, generations of children have been forced to sit still at desks absorbing facts and figures when they could have been more willingly engaged, mentally and physically, following a wider range of their interests and strengthening their health.
Sir Ken criticised traditional schooling for prioritising memorisation over curiosity and exploration. Stephen Graham’s career path shows a successful learning path through doing, experimenting, questioning, and embracing challenge.
Evolve and the headteachers it works with deploy specially trained Evolve Health Mentor staff who use a range of engaging, fun, physical activities to build positive relationships and trust with the children they work with.
Emotional health
Emotional health is vital for learning and performance because it creates the internal stability needed for the brain to function at its best. When students feel safe, supported, and emotionally balanced, they can focus more easily, think clearly, and take on new challenges with confidence. Strong emotional well-being improves motivation, resilience, and relationships with others, all essential for working creatively and collaboratively.
Conversely, stress, anxiety, and low self-esteem can block concentration, memory, and problem-solving. In short, emotional health provides the foundation for effective learning, positive behaviour, and the ability to perform well in school, work, and life.
Evolve’s Health Mentor staff mentors their children to help them feel valued as individuals who are capable of achieving more than they thought for themselves.
Sir Ken Robinson believed creativity cannot flourish without emotional safety.
Stephen Graham has spoken openly about depression, imposter syndrome, and periods of emotional struggle. His honesty illustrates the profound power of emotional intelligence, acknowledging vulnerability, developing resilience, and forming authentic connections.
Evolve shares this conviction, mentoring pupils as individuals with unique emotional worlds, not merely as data contributing to future exam results for the school and the education system.
Cognitive health
“Learning isn’t about adding more information, it’s about unlocking more of the brain you already have.” – Jim Kwik
Cognitive health is crucial for learning and performance because it underpins the brain’s ability to process information, solve problems, and adapt to new challenges. Strong cognitive function supports essential skills such as attention, memory, decision making, and mental flexibility, all of which directly influence how well someone learns and performs. When cognitive health is nurtured through stimulation, practice, and healthy habits, people can think more clearly, retain information more effectively, and respond creatively and confidently in complex situations.
Without a healthy brain, even motivated learners may struggle to focus, understand new ideas, or apply their knowledge. In essence, cognitive health is the engine that powers learning, achievement, and long-term success.
Evolve Health Mentor staff have used the online brain training of BrainHQ to strengthen the cognitive functions of pupils, and this has helped to transform their performance in school. Too often, education ignores the development of the brain itself, overlooking opportunities to improve decision making, resilience, and mental strength, skills essential not only in school, but in business, sport, wellbeing, and life.
“If a brain is exercised properly, anyone can grow intelligence, at any age, and potentially by a lot. Or you can just let your brain idle, and watch it slowly, inexorably, go to seed like a sedentary body.” – Dr Michael Merzenich, BrainHQ
From failure to flourishing
Sir Ken warned that suppressing creativity is one of the greatest wastes of human potential. Evolve is helping rewrite this reality by nurturing the capabilities of each child it mentors, preparing young people not just to recall information, but to think, to question, and to navigate an ever-changing world with confidence.
Stephen’s learning has mainly been experiential. He once noted, “You can learn a lot from drama school, but you can learn much more when you are working.” The University of Life, in many ways, has been his classroom.
Evolve fosters the same mindset, developing relationships, cultivating interests, and building confidence, ambition, and creativity far beyond what a subject focus can offer.
Stephen’s journey reflects Sir Ken’s core message: those who seem unsuited to traditional school often become the most dynamic and impactful contributors to society. Despite academic setbacks, Stephen Graham’s authenticity, emotional intelligence, and disciplined craft have earned him international respect.
Evolve mirrors this philosophy by supporting young people who may struggle within conventional systems, empowering them through holistic development, physically, emotionally, and cognitively.
Evolving the future of human development
As already mentioned, Sir Ken warned that suppressing creativity is one of the greatest wastes of human potential, and creativity has never been needed more than now for our children.
Stephen Graham’s story demonstrates what becomes possible when education embraces the whole person. Academic labels did not define him. Emotional honesty strengthened him. Physical discipline grounded him. Self-directed learning expanded him. Stephen is living proof that when individuals channel their interests and skills, they can evolve to attain a higher potential where experience and extraordinary talent can emerge to deliver higher standards of performance.
“When we give focus to physical, emotional and brain health, we do not just learn, we awaken.” – Mel Robins
Read more from Graham John Morgan
Graham John Morgan, Performance Mentor
Graham Morgan's career was initially in physical education and then football coaching at a high level, before moving on to devising Project HERO (Health Engagement Real Outcomes), a multi-award-winning mentoring programme.
He has taken the successful mentoring work of Evolve: A Social Impact Company, developed in partnership with John Bishop, and combined it with the brain training expertise of Dr. Michael Merzenich of BrainHQ. The result is poised to be a game-changer for football coaching.
