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The Dept. of Premier and Cabinet in South Australia Better Together initiative put together a showcase last week on the ideas, projects and tools behind co-design, co-production and co-creation in partnership with my organisation The Australian Centre for Social Innovation. We heard many stories of co from many different speakers from South Australia Pecha Kucha style. This was really heartening to hear the energy and the genuine focus on change that was evident. Some 300 people attended the event and they were very excited by the idea of co-design and co-production. So, how do you go about implementing it? My colleague Ryan and I closed the session with a workshop on three questions related to implementing these kind of projects. 1. What methods do I use when? 2. What about when we have to start with an idea? 3. How do I embed a culture of innovation throughout my organisation? (I will update with a slideshow later and possibly a video when its up) You can get a sense of what happened on twitter. Martin SW, who is on the board of our organisation, who did an amazing job of facilitating the event, summarised the top 10 headlines from the day.
Which leads me to this brief post about some of the headline insights I captured from a showcase of “co” practice, put on in Adelaide by the South Australian Department of Premier & Cabinet and The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), of which I am a director. And the session, which I facilitated, was called, suitably enough, “better together”.
Nine great stories latter — covering libraries, marine parks, universities, disability services, city transformation and a whole lot of other things — I emerged with some big themes and common insights from the discussion. Nearly 300 people in the room, a whole morning of presentations and debate and then a very solid hour of tools and techniques from TACSI to show how the instinct for “co” turns into real work and learnable practice, made for a very productive day.