Keeping social innovation social – The Australian Centre for Social Innovation

Written by Chris Vanstone, Chief Innovation Officer at TACSI

Human connection is core to social innovation. But, how do you get people together, when they can’t be in the same room?

How do you work together, when you’re apart? How do you build a deep understanding of people’s context and preferences, when you can meet them face to face?

Whilst the Covid-19 situation is unprecedented, social innovation at a distance isn’t. Whilst right now, in the midst of the pandemic we have to work at a distance, in the past we’ve chosen to: because it was cheaper, faster, saved a few tonnes of carbon, or was more inclusive. At times working at a distance has even enabled us to connect better; for example with  a survivor of domestic violence who wanted to stay anonymous, or a young person who was out and about and otherwise hard to pin down.

But enforced social distancing has forced us to innovate too. We’ve put things online we never would have otherwise.

Some of my favourite innovations so far include:

We’ve also been reusing some other old favorites like the ‘Connection Section’, a core part of what keeps our weekly 30 person team meeting, ‘TACSI Tuesday’ human. ‘Connection Sections’ involve small breakout groups discussing a question that relates to them as people. For example, “If you were a superhero who would you be?”. In recent weeks they’ve taken a tone that’s equal parts sombre and hilarious: “If you could only travel to one more place in your life, where would you go?” or “What three things would you need in your larder to get you through 14 days of self-isolation.”

We’ve collected all these strategies, and more, in a pack to support the TACSI team, our partners, clients, and now you, to do your best work during the pandemic. The first two sections, ‘Getting in the room’ and ‘Working together’ are going to be relevant to most organisations. The last set, ‘Getting out there’, is more specific to the work of human centred design and innovation.

Use them, comment on them, add your suggestions to make them better.