The May 2013 DwD was presented by Satsuko vanAntwerp and Lucie Stephens at the new location of The Moment.  The workshop presented the context of citizen co-creation of services at the community level.

We are the public and therefore all public services are of our making, our legacy, and our experience. However, the complex challenges the world faces right now – changing demographics, fiscal reductions, environmental collapse, growing inequality – are straining these services and pushing us to question how we act, organize and respond as citizens and communities.

Co-creation and co-production offers a new perspective that values the vital resources already present within the system – the skills and resources held by citizens and communities in and around public services. The dialogue session explored the questions of:

• What is our role as citizens in making services more effective, efficient and sustainable?
• What would it take to make better use of wider resources in community and see all citizens as assets?
• How might we grow our social networks and rethink our capacity to lead change within our community?

Live sketchnotes at the event by Playthink

ABOUT THE HOSTS

Lucie Stephens is the Head of Co-production in the Social Policy team at nef (the new economics foundation). Her work aims to increase the amount of co-production taking place in public services in the UK and overseas. Lucie supports people to develop their co-production practice, documents examples and develops the theory of co-production, sharing learning and auditing existing activity.  She works with people in communities, charities and third sector organisations, policy makers and people designing and delivering public services. Lucie’s publications on co-production include: The Co-production Manifesto, Public Services Inside Out and The New Wealth of Time.

Satsuko VanAntwerp is the Manager of Social Innovation at Social Innovation Generation (SiG). Her work aims to create legitimacy and structure for the nascent field of laboratories for social change and to incentivize collaboration among lab practitioners. Prior to joining SiG, Satsuko participated in a work-term on co-production with Denmark’s MindLab and assisted with the paper: Designing For Co-Production: Discovering New Business Models For Public Services. Satsuko holds an MBA in Social Entrepreneurship and is an avid blogger on social innovation and systemic change at Think Thrice.

Humans are going through a massive transitional period. This “Great Turning” is calling for collective intelligence, collective wisdom and collective capacity as never before. We are being asked to revolutionize how we work together.

Barefoot facilitators are to professional facilitators what paramedics are to doctors: a person with a basic and versatile toolkit and enough savvy to skillfully support what is needed 80% of the time, and for a fraction of the cost.

Kate is inspired by the “barefoot doctors” of revolutionary China. In the mid-60s, there was little access to medical care in rural areas, and not enough resources to supply fully trained doctors. Instead, 30,000 villagers were trained in basic Western and Chinese medicine — enough to treat common ailments, and to share information about hygiene, family planning, and prevention of epidemics.

They were called “barefoot doctors” because when they weren’t tending to basic medical needs, these people continued to farm barefoot in the rice paddies along side their neighbours. This important innovation rapidly revolutionized health outcomes in rural China.

By analogy, we do not have resources or capacity to supply professional facilitators to all the meetings and group endeavours supporting the great shifts underway. There are, however, thousands of people in all walks of life already up-skilling their ability to facilitate deep and lasting change in the human systems of which they are a part.

Questions we explored included the following:

• What shifts in perspective will greatly enhance your effectiveness in groups?

• What ways of being are like secret sauce for what you are doing?
• What organizational theories are most helpful for a “barefoot facilitator” toolkit?
• How can we grow a movement of barefoot facilitators who help each other  with supporting the groups of which they are a part?

Visual recording by Charlotte Young. Thanks also to Natalie Zend for facilitation support, and Patricia for the sketchnotes.

About Kate:

Kate Sutherland is an author and social entrepreneur who helps change agents and social benefit initiatives be more innovative and effective. As a consultant, trainer and coach, she has helped hundreds of leaders and organizations be more nimble, resilient and aligned with their core purpose.

Kate is the author of Make Light Work in Groups: 10 Tools to Transform Meetings, Companies and Communities, and Make Light Work: 10 Tools for Inner Knowing. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and teenaged daughter. For more about Kate, see www.katersutherland.com.

“We already have proven solutions to our toughest social challenges. Our bigger challenge is working together to scale them for wider benefit. Kate’s latest book is a precious resource for those looking to improve how they work not only with allies but also with opponents and strangers.”

– Al Etmanski, Co-chair of BC Partners for Social Impact

Can rethinking challenges together break through our most compelling health design problems?

February’s DwD held an open session for health and design professionals from across sectors in the community. Paolo Korre, Design Consultant at Mount Sinai Hospital, and Peter Jones hosted about 30 people from a diverse range of roles and sectors attended (starting off with a visual mapping of name tags by place and health intention).  Most of us reported as being external to healthcare (bottom of the grid), but we were lucky enough to get 4 or so closer to the front lines of care and practice.

The engagement was typical DwD :

1) Open circle share and introduction
2) Nominal group technique: Generating one well-framed question (or wicked problem) in health of personal interest
3) Selection for first round Open Space (5 groups)
4) Further selection for larger Cafe sessions (4 groups)
5) Post and share Cafe sketches

+ Hanging around to talk with those who wanted to stay longer

What is the possibility for creating better practices and healthier communities through health and care design? What experience and wisdom might emerge if we had the time and place to share it with a community of committed listeners?

The  following three intentions (at least 1 and 2) were upheld by the end of the evening:

1. Bringing local participants together with opportunities for connection / collaboration
2. Presenting authentic issues of concern to our work and communities
3. Inventing possible avenues for action or engagement to follow

Of 30 or so initial wicked problems (or questions), one each proposed by each person, a first set of 5 were selected and engaged for a round:

1. How can healthcare tech innovation be reconciled with costs?
2. Why is healthcare so full of “problems?”
3. What is health and who cares?
4. How can we take ownership of our own health records?

A second round of Cafe sessions selected the most compelling themes from the first round of ideas. The final set of problems were taken on by four groups, with these responses sketched, posted (see the picture), and discussed in plenary.

James Caldwell (shown here engaged in the “Participaction” group) reviewed the workshop and discovered deeper insights and connections than we had time to develop at the close to the evening.

“Ideally each group was trying to create better practices that improved communication which would allow for better health. We presented real issues that hamper individuals and communities and tried to devise credible actions for health care engagement.”

The three that I will focus on are:
1. How do we redefine how to be radically inclusive?
2. If physical inactivity is the root of all health evil, why not ban it?
3. How do we create and maintain and own our own comprehensive health records?

“The result of any of these would mean that individuals become the drivers or agents of their own health. Ironically, the impact to the government’s financial system would be positive.”

All three issues have a few things in common:
1. They empower the individual
2. They lesson costs for the government
3. They improve the future health of the individual
4. They make for a more engaged society

“Of course any sane person would be asking why are we undertaking these initiatives today? Common sense would dictate that we would all be happier, healthier and more informed if we did. But I guess that’s why we call them “wicked problems”. Unfortunately too many groups that make too much money from individuals with health problems would lose, and I don’t think they will give up their control anytime soon.”

“I guess this is where designers can speak up and more effectively communicate to everyone why initiatives such as the three mentioned could help better our society. Designers could simplify the problem, the parameters, the solution and the message to a wider audience than the health industry or government could which would be seen as self-serving anyway.”

I agree with James that the 3 (actually all four) final problem areas are interconnected in the solutions. James is considering the outcomes, which show a virtuous cycle of healthy behavior (active lifestyles), inclusive public communication, and monitoring through electronic media. The fourth problem-solution (bottom of the board) was “creating community healing spaces.” I”m not sure this one was as well understood by the other groups, but it seems to me that James’ individual solution space is complemented by a public (or co-citizen-led) system of:

1. Reframing inclusive healthcare to focus on those that need it most (who are unlikely to take individual initiative)
2. Creating community centres as temporary (but connected) healing spaces,
3. Thereby providing many opportunities to get off one’s butt
4. Supported by personal health tracking in ever-decreasing cost and management, providing incentives to maintain a common health record.

When Gelareh Saadatpajouh, Programs Coordinator at Toronto Design Offsite set out to facilitate Design with Dialogue’s TO DO session she decided to have our group explore, as she puts it:

“Design processes, where plurality of indeterminate factors is approached together and in an ongoing manner, and where designers become adept in handling the growing complexity in both materials of their craft and their position in the world.”

Increasingly designers are being called upon to search their souls in order to create with meaning. In a world exhausted by consumer culture and in desperate need of cultural revision we as designers can play a key role. As Gelareh got us up and activated with an exercise where we mimed our way of working it was clear why design thinking is so adaptable across platforms, disciplines and cultures. For as many people as were in the room there was a different design process. As we later shared our revelations from watching each other I realized that my own design process is also adaptable to where I am in my life’s journey and can shift when I have a renewed way of interacting with my world.

For over a decade my creation happened in isolation. Working with clients to design promotional tools and branding strategy there would be a two-way dialogue with the client after which I would go inside to then create something that would ultimately reach out. After another exercise where we were directed to find a design process action then go out into the group with that action to mingle I realized that my process has radically shifted. Now my first step is to reach out. I start by engaging in multi-directional dialogue, sometimes with other designers, but more often than not those dialogues are with people from many different walks of life. Sometimes those dialogues occur at street corners, even with strangers. I design as I walk, I process as I talk.

More and more I see others who design programs or products, ad campaigns or architecture instinctively, like me, reach out first as the point from which to start. As Design Week in Toronto demonstrated there is a community expanding around the questions “What is design?” and “Can we as designers contribute to modeling a new type of world?”. The idea of the collective is now being understood as the base from which we need to grow ideas. At a time when we require it the most the spirit of collaboration has motivated designers into taking more radical positions. The result -  fertile ground in which we see new materials and new models rapidly sprout.

For the last part of the workshop Gelareh had us break out into small groups “guided by a designer who shared something of their design, resulting in new “artifacts” that were then constructed through brainstorming, creative discussions, and active participation throughout the design process.”

On the street, a few days later, I randomly bumped into someone whose group I was in. I was able to ask her if the exercise we did on her project was helpful to her. Did it result in a new “artifact” for her work? The answer -  an enthusiastic yes! And as we walked up to the street corner together, before going our separate ways, we continued to design as we walked and process as we talked.

• How do we build culture in a durable, intentional way?
• How do we learn and teach from design process itself?
• How have we learned to improvise or hack design practices so that we personalize design thinking with our own experience?
• How might we build on each other’s practices to make something new happen?

For the Toronto Design Offsite we created an experience for culture building through sharing and learning design processes. We will have an open space exchange of learning and generative framing through design participation. If you are a designer or participatory culture artist, we invite you to attend and share in this workshop a method or practice for small group envisioning, scenario or model making, or group sketching type practice.

Culture building is the re-creation of artistic and social evolutionary practices that enable continuous learning across generations. The workshop invited people to share their own design processes in small groups to co-create cultural artifacts, such as a learning experience, an interior, a song, a plan, or a website or publication. The goal was the participatory process itself, and learning from one another ways of revealing collective wisdom and aliveness in co-creation.

Design with Dialogue (DwD) is a Toronto-based open community of practice. This special workshop was a collaboration between Gelareh Saadatpajouh and Markus Doerr with Peter Jones from DwD, with Miranda Corcoran and Leah Snyder , photographers and Patricia Kambitsch, live sketching.

Cultural identification started with the introductions, which were simply adding a nametag to the Toronto map o’ culture waiting participants at the entrance:

Small groups met in spaces all around Lambert Lounge to co-create dialogues and pictures of practice:

Navigating the complexities of modern relationships

We spend a lot of time perfecting our craft at work – striving for that 10,000 hours. But when was the last time you spent dedicated time on getting better at relationships? Perhaps because designers are often tasked with solving “wicked”, complex problems, the language of design provides many useful metaphors for exploring the complexities of modern relationships. By using design as a language to talk about dating and relationships, the conversation becomes more objective, and less subjective (aka less awkward).

DwD hosted Ayla Newhouse to present a design charette (a short, intensive and collaborative design exercise) for relationships, to apply the creativity and processes of design to dating and relationships. Participants were matched up into small groups to design their way out of (or into) fictional relational and dating situations.

Thanks to Aimee @ISEEAIMEE for the live sketching.

Hosting the session:

Ayla Newhouse is a Communication, Interaction and “Attraction” Designer with 16 years of relationship experience ranging from misalignment to creative brilliance. She is the creator of Dating by Design, and the author of “the ABC’s of Dating by Design” (datingbydesign.ca). Ayla also offers one-on-one and couples Dating by Design consulting.  Follow her at @aisforayla

Previously, Ayla co-founded 1thingapp.com: a social gratitude journal that helps people recognize the good things in their lives. A graduate of the Communication Design program at the Emily Carr Institute and the Interdisciplinary Design program at the Institute without Boundaries, Ayla worked with Normative Design and Bruce Mau Design before starting her own design/coaching practice in 2011.

In late August, OCADU’s Strategic Innovation Lab engaged 18 academics and thought leaders from around Ontario in an intensive one-day panel on Imagining Canada’s Future, to formulate a short list of distinct future challenges that SSHRC should address through future research programs. The panel research continues with an OCADU-led research team involving York, Ryerson, Windsor and UOIT in developing the findings and report.

Affording an opportunity for public knowledge mobilization, the question DwD with an open panel of innovators and students in the DwD and university communities.

The framing of the panel was centred around the question:

“As Southern Ontario faces the effects of global urbanization, what are the highest priority social and systemic challenges, now through 2030?”

To further develop a public inquiry into the same question, a community design workshop was held on this important foresight perspective.  What are the opportunities and possible outcomes for a design-led approach to social sciences challenges?  With over 20 creative and professional participants, the session rapidly engaged (and experimented with) variations of dialogic design methods for problem framing and collective sensemaking in the “open sandbox” of the DwD community:

• Framing of the Triggering Question
• Generating Challenges – Individual, Paired, and Round Robin
• Concurrent Clarification of Challenges
• Voting on Challenges
• Challenges Selection – Group Scenario Creation

A single visual map of the workshop goals, activities and scenarios was sketched in concert by Charlotte Young and regular Patricia Kambitsch.

To preserve time, only one well-defined challenge per participant was selected.

Four breakout groups composed scenarios from selected challenges, assembling both a set of related problems from challenges and the proposed solutions.

Scenarios were designed to highlight salience of relationships over a 20 year timeline, with guidance to show Milestones, Headlines, and Solutions.

The Open Equitable Diverse society showed the  transformation of government and citizen engagement, from top-down governance to bottom-up “poll” or pull governance. The concept of a Social GPS was proposed as an advanced global social network enabling this transition.

Socially engaged ownership and new systems of urban design, resource management, equitable housing arrangements and neighbourhood communities was envisioned.

A combination of challenges in a problematic network was envisioned being addressed by a positive scenario involving social health, participatory engagement,education services and considering the renewal of the family as a unit of planning.

Two diverse society scenarios were developed. The Feeling Canadian scenario expressed the possible scenarios of a deeply values-centred view of a socially-designed approach to enhancing diversity and while managing urbanization pressures, considering the impacts of city governance, neighbourhood management, and the preservation of Canadian history. Mediators of good government, an educational mandate, and community engagement were proposed.

Another team constructed a classical 2×2 matrix defining four quadrants against the problems of food security and income inequality led to a timeline and solution focus on the quadrant of significant income inequality and managed local food sources. This may be seen as a “highly likely” scenario approach inspiring immediate social action to address probable effects, rather than farsighted solutions.

We started the workshop with a presentation of the dialogic design approach and an overview of the SSH-sponsored panel from the Imagining Canada’s Future project.

Peter Jones, DwD Community Convener and OCADU professor is guiding the workshop and the trial of experimental approaches (visual, technical) to complement the dialogic design method. The session was co-convened with the team of Strategic Foresight and Innovation graduate student Uma Maharaj and visual recording from Charlotte Young and Patricia Kambitsch.

Joanna spoke June 21^st to a sold-out audience at OISE, on her new book Active Hope – How to Face the Mess We’re In Without Going Crazy. This special DwD workshop followed Joanna’s recent talks and workshops in Canada for a Toronto community experience of The Work that Reconnects.

The Work that Reconnects

Following the Spiral of the Work that Reconnects, as developed by Joanna Macy, PhD, we journeyed into gratitude and joy in being alive, through honouring our pain for the world, to seeing with new eyes and finally going forth.

Three Stories of our Times: participants were invited to consider narratives by which we understand the times we are living in and what is possible now for life on Earth.

Business as Usual: Industrial Growth Society must and can continue; it is a wonderful success story involving continuous human progress and growth in economic prosperity spreading around the world. Getting ahead is what matters, and the problems of the world are seen as far off and irrelevant to our personal lives.

The Great Unravelling: The destructive consequences of the business-as-usual mode. Life-sustaining systems of Earth and of human communities are in serious decline, as seen in economic instability and inequity, resource depletion, climate disruption, peak oil, social division and war, and mass extinction of species.

The Great Turning toward a life-sustaining society committed to the recovery of our world.

This turning is manifested in three dimensions: 1) holding actions that slow the damage being done by business-as-usual and protect ecological and social systems; 2) alternative or Gaian structures, the creative redesign of practices and societal structures in fields from education and healthcare to housing and justice; and 3) a shift in consciousness that deepens our sense of connectedness and collective identity and inspires us to consider the inner frontier of change and also to take action in the world.

Reflections: How do you see each of these stories unfolding around you in these times?

Which do you want to get behind?

The group process called Meet the Ancestors allowed participants to step outside of time and meet imaginatively as people of the present day and people of the future.

Our Guest Presenters

SALLY LUDWIG M.A., M.Sc. works towards transforming relationships as a therapist with individuals, couples, families and groups. She is a co-founder of Transition Guelph, part of the international movement to build community resilience in a changing world.

NATALIE ZEND M.A., CTDP is a training and facilitation consultant with 14 years’ experience in international development and human rights. She is a co-founder of Unify Toronto, and offers the Awakening the Dreamer symposium, compassionate communication, and other social technologies in her local community.

The process and reflection was live sketched by Patricia Kambitsch of Playthink.

We live and work in a world where conflict exists at multiple scales (locally, nationally and internationally) and contexts (social, economic, cultural, political, and environmental).  Conflicts can be interpersonal, collective, organizational, structural and/or psycho-spiritual.  They can be over values, beliefs, relationships, data, structures, identities and/or competing interests

One thing is certain: conflicts are inevitable. Designing a system to transform conflicts involves, among other things, the values of inclusiveness, mutual respect, participatory processes, collaborative and responsive decision-making, and shared power.  One of the factors that separates constructive outcomes from destructive dynamics are the approach, design and skills of communicating and negotiating.

Whether the conflict be a large-scale social-cultural conflict, an organizational dispute or deteriorating interpersonal relationships, one process of transforming conflict involves the use of interest-based negotiating and strategic communication.

In this workshop, we will outline the basic skills and designs for resolving various types of conflict with a focus on our own interpersonal and workplace relationships. To do so, we will focus on the analytical and communication skills that assist in identifying the nature of the conflicts, de-escalates and clarifies issues, and encourages collaborative problem-solving.

This DwD session explored:

• The dynamics and meaning of conflict
• Strategies and skills for facilitating communication within conflict
• Ways to effectively raise issues and concerns
• How to utilize interest-based approaches for both negotiation and system design

The session adapted our own experiences to think about the ways people (ourselves) generally deal with conflict. Exercises included active listening in simulated conflict, and working in triads to enact role-play scenarios in order to practice these skills and approaches.

Rick Wallace working with participants.

Contributions from group dialogue.

Rick Wallace brings over 20 years of national and international experience as an adult educator and 14 years as a trainer and mediator in conflict resolution, negotiation, strategic planning and leadership skills.