CO CREATIVE IMPACT & INNOVATION
Get to know our next ci2i Global Learn / Share Lab
in February 2014 at Thailand
Christina Jordan´s post at ci2i Global blog
In October 2013, Ci2i Global issued a call among our peers around the world for case studies in co-creative impact and innovation, to be presented at our upcoming Learn/Share Lab in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
After examining 21 case studies, we’re liking the term more and more for it’s cross-cutting ability to capture a description of how more inclusive change is happening lately in all kinds of contexts. Communities, non-profits, companies, cities, universities, and entrepreneurs are experiencing, practicing and inviting co-creation in varying degrees to achieve social objectives.
We noticed that the case studies we received were spread almost evenly across a matrix that plotted two spectra:
1) Social objectives that are determined in advance, versus completely emergent.
2) Participant groups that are highly curated, versus offering a completely open invitation to the general public.
2) Participant groups that are highly curated, versus offering a completely open invitation to the general public.
The case studies submitted were of an extremely high caliber. We were unable to limit ourselves to the initial 7 we thought to invite. In selecting 10 cases to study in Chiang Mai alongside our 5 partner cases, we’ve chosen a cross-section from across the matrix, that also represents a global spread. We’re thrilled to have excellent examples of co-creative social impact in action from business, academia, the non-profit world and social entrepreneurs.
One of our key co-creative activities at the Learn/Share Lab will be to hack and dissect these cases to determine the co-creative attributes they have in common, and how those can be taught, replicated and nurtured in the pursuit of social change in even more contexts. With a clearer picture that lab participants and case study presenters alike can begin to see around the nature of co-creation and how it works, we’d like to start refining our global discourse about social change, and begin to actively nurture more know how and a broader awareness of co-creativity as a critical factor in building new systems that thrive.
The cases we’re honoring with an invitation to help us define co-creative impact and innovation by presenting at the Learn/Share Lab for Co-creative Impact and Innovation in Chiang Mai include: CURATED CO-CREATION FOR DETERMINED OBJECTIVES
- Letsrecycle, India - Paul Biplab is an Ashoka Fellow emancipating roadside waste pickers from exploitative informal waste buyers. When the company experienced a recent fire, the waste pickers contributed their ideas for rebuilding in a better way, that now enables them to collect even more.
- Witness, D.R. Congo – Gillian Caldwell served as the Executive Director of Witness when they played a major role in equipping, training and supporting local human rights advocates in the DRC to engage in participatory video production about the human rights abuses surrounding the recruitment and abduction of child soldiers.
- McDonalds/DISCAR, Latin America - Carolina Tocalli served as executive director of DISCAR Argentina, a social entreprise currently partnered with McDonalds to involve the managers, co-workers and families of mentally disabled workers in co-creating a supported employment model at McDonalds across Latin America.
- Thrivable, global - Jean Russell curates co-created books around the topic of thrivability, lifting up an idea by lifting the visibility of the contributors.
OPEN CO-CREATION FOR DETERMINED OBJECTIVES
- Sistema SER, Argentina - Simon Gronda carries on the work of his father – an Ashoka Fellow and doctor who co-created a new health care system with poor women in the Jujuy region, which has since partnered with the State and served more than 67,000 people.
- The Barefoot Guides, Global - Doug Reeler is part of the core team behind a global and local community of social change leaders and practitioners, from many countries, who co-create resources to deepen and develop approaches and initiatives that contribute to a changing world
- GetLocal coop, Ireland - Eimhin Shortt is creating cooperative businesses with a focus on local resource resilience by carbon neutral means in a way that is non-coercive and is democratically owned and run by member/customers.
CURATED CO-CREATION FOR EMERGENT OBJECTIVES
- NESIS, Chile - Gianncarlo Durán Díaz nurtures Higher Education Hubs for Social Innovation in Chile: Fostering cross-sector collaborations from the Academic Sector.
- YES! Meshwork, Global – based in the Netherlands, Anne Marie Voorhoeve led 55 youth leaders from 30 countries in a facilitated meshwork process where stakeholders bring together their strengths and resources to achieve a common purpose.
- Evolutionize It, Uganda / Thailand - Christina Jordan guides displaced communities in developing local community project plans and finding resources from global supporters through co-creative online campaigns.
- Ci2i Global – Bonnie Koenig leads on organizational development as a Ci2i Global partner.
OPEN CO-CREATION FOR EMERGENT OBJECTIVES
- The Women’s School and Interfaith Movement, Indonesia – Lian Gogali is an Ashoka Fellow who has created a method for trauma healing and cultivating empathy by which women and children transform themselves from victims of war, into survivors, and peacemakers.
- Co-create Adelaide, Australia - John Baxter has developed a methodology called Freespace to expand the principles of Open Space Technologies to a festival and a collaboration.
- Edgeryders, Europe - Nadia EL-Imam was the creative director for a research project that should result in recommendations on youth employment to the Council of Europe. In response, the Edgeryders Open Consultancy was designed for participants to help one another bridge the growing gap between the need to make a living and the need to do meaningful work that at least doesn’t harm the ecosocial systems we live in.
- Omidyar.net, Global – Jean Russell and Christina Jordan met 8 years ago through a co-creative online community space hosted by the Omidyar Network. This case will examine some of the global collaborations that emerged through the network, and invite conversation around developing practical working spaces for co-creative practitioners.
Congratulations to all the cases selected and to the presenters invited to join us in Chiang Mai.
