TACSI - What's happening

Jobs at TACSI

Erin Green — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:40:00 +1000

TACSI has 3 great new positions open now for high energy, proactive, intelligent, resilient, flexible, versatile and genuinely dynamic individuals. These kinds of opportunities don't come along everyday - so what are you waiting for?!

We're looking for the consumate completer finisher to make sure our Centre runs like clockwork and two project officers who want to get their hands dirty on our Challenge and Ageing Society projects doing everything from research to venture support.

As a small not-for-profit startup everyone at TACSI has the opportunity to be involved with work above and beyond their roles and really sink their teeth in to some of the most interesting possibilities around. So come and join us - and get ready to inspire and be inspired.

All 3 positions are based in Adelaide, South Australia. For more information check out our Jobs With Us page.

Designing Innovation: Ezio Manzini

Erin Green — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:17:00 +1000

Join us as renowned sustainability and design thinker, Ezio Manzini, hits our shores for the Social Innovator Dialogues to share his insights and experience on social innovation and design and ways forward for sustainable environmental and social systems.

TACSI, along with partners ASIX and the Centre for Social Impact, have joined forces to deliver the Social Innovator Dialogues. An opportunity to engage with some of the leading thinkers and doers in the social innovation space.

And what a way to kick off. This July come spend some time with Ezio Manzini, Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano, Honorary Doctor at The New School of New York (2006) and at the Goldsmiths College of London (2008) and honorary professor at the Glasgow School of Art (2009).

Ezio Manzini is no stranger to the social innovation arena. His work includes building environments that encourage and support social innovation and how design-thinking, particular co-design (a project process driven by end-users, local groups and service providers) can create sustainable positive change. Several of his papers are available here.

Presently, his main interests are design for social innovation and he is promoter and coordinator of DESIS Network, an international network on Design for Social Innovation and Sustainability (http://www.desis-network.org ).

Masterclasses and free public forums are being held in Adelaide (12 July), Melbourne (14 July) and Sydney (15/16 July) so to register for your spot go to www.sidialogues.org.au.

Family, tails & opportunities. Photos of the weeks.

Chris Vanstone — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 19:05:00 +1000

Three weeks ago we ran a family festival for 100 families. Two weeks ago we finished up our family dinners and ethnographies with a trip to Port Augusta. Over the last week, we've been trying to make sense 'family thriving' and identifying opportunities areas with our ethnographers and sounding board. Phew!

After all that the three of us are taking a week break before turning our thinking to date into something that will makes sense on the page. Until then here are the retrospective photos of the weeks.

Our family festival attracted over 100 families to 10 tents of developmental activities.

We challenged families to come up with their own "family boosting experience". The winning family won $100 to spend on an op-shop dress up project.

Sound dude Matt, a professional sound engineer, introduced young people and families to making music on the computer.

Stalls and games, like kids vs adults tug-o-war, were organised by local residents. Tug-o-war result: Adults 2 Kids 1

In Port Augusta, we met three families and began to learn about family life in a country context. We helped run a BBQ at the Sunday flea market and got invited to go bush for a lesson in how to cook and eat kangaroo tails

Back in the studio we shared the stories we'd heard from families and began to make sense of the opportunities.

We came up with over 60 different ways to describe the opportunities we see for families. Most of them didn't work - but here Sarah thinks she's found 'the one'.

On Thursday we checked out our thinking with the Sounding board. Here Carolyn checks out our service story with Sue Christophers of Communities for Children Onkaparinga.

Ode to honey chicken

Sarah Schulman — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 12:20:00 +1000

It was all about honey chicken this week. We sat around dinning room tables, kitchen tables, and perched in front rooms, laughing, sharing, talking, and eating a lot of Chinese food.

We’ve also been with moms and dads to school pick-ups, to the store, to appointments, and even hung out around the house watching TV, cleaning floors, doing laundry, etc. No day has been the same.

Some key themes are starting to emerge; themes around ‘managing’ family life versus ‘experiencing’ family life; themes around ‘leisure’ time versus ‘convenience’ time; themes around work as money versus work as meaning; themes around neighborhood support versus neighborhood talk.

From these themes, we’ll start to name what could be different for individuals and families and what change would look like in neighborhoods, schools, services, employers, etc. We’ll also come up with a new way to segment families; grouping families by the resources they have to offer and not just the needs they have.

And families have a lot to offer. Unfortunately a lot of the ‘social service’ language treats people as passive recipients of professional help. I find the word ‘client’ particularly problematic as it emphasizes a one-way relationship, owned and operated by the ‘service provider’ or ‘worker.’ It’s hard to shift this language, in part, because families aren’t sure what to call us. We’re not service providers or workers, but we’re not exactly neighbors or friends. Families do see a clear difference between people ‘paid’ to work with them, and people who are just there because ‘they have heart.’ We’re occupying the middle ground, as brokers and facilitators, of new kinds of supports, relationships, networks, etc. We do get paid. And I’d like to think we have a whole lot of heart. As we continue to co-design the solution set, we’ll need to find new ways to break the dichotomy between ‘paid’ and ‘voluntary’ between ‘workers’ and ‘clients’ and between ‘professionals’ and ‘people.’ We’ll need to colour across the lines.

Every week, the Family Project will post what we've been up to and what we are learning. We'll share a project perspective and a personal perspective, documenting our shifts in thinking and doing.

Meet the Challenge shortlist

Erin Green — Thu, 01 Jul 2010 10:43:00 +1000

At first there were 258 and now there are 12. The shortlist for the Bold Ideas Better Lives Challenge has been made and now our 12 hardy survivors will be rolling up their sleeves as part of Stage 2. But before the hard work starts - here's a big congratulations to all 12!

Want to know who they are? Then check out our 2010 Shortlist page for more details. It's been a difficult task for the judges to choose between such a diverse array of inventive, thoughtful and worthy projects and there were so many more projects that showed a combination of either innovation, implementation or social impact.

The final 12 now move into Stage 2 of the Challenge where they work with TACSI to develop an implementable project plan that shows in detail why their idea is innovative, how it can be implemented and the social impacts it will have on communities in Australia.

We've put everyone's pitches online on our TACSI Challenge Vimeo Channel so you can have a look at the breadth and variety of projects that were offered.

We're also giving individual feed back to all our applicants because we think it's important to share our experience, decision-making process and reactions to their ideas to help more of these great ideas get off the ground.

We think the ideas in our shortlist are exciting and address a diverse range of issues affecting Australian communities in a wide variety of ways. The Challenge is really hotting up now - we've got $1 million to invest and our 12 finalists need to demonstrate over the next 3 months that their project should be supported. It's going to be an exciting time for us all!

Tea at Home

Chris — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 16:55:00 +1000

This week we've been meeting families at home to eat takeaway and learn about family stress from the experts.

As a shortcut to understanding family structure we asked families to think of themselves as a business - to name the different 'roles', to develop their 'motto' and a 'five year plan'.

With young people we've been drawing pictures of family, naming family rules and making videos to show 'What makes my family different'.

With the aid of Suzy Wong's delicious Honey Chicken we're on the way to understanding what thriving means to families, what families are attracted to be part of and what turns them off.

A KaosPilot Perspective

Bert Meijers — Thu, 27 May 2010 14:00:00 +1000

It's no picnic being a social entrepreneur.... Bert Meijers, Kaospilot & TACSI intern, explores some first steps in building networks for this unique group of passionate individuals.

Social Entrepreneurs are passionate individuals who seek to create social value through innovative solutions: these are the people that TACSI wishes to support. In order to do this we need to create a better understanding of who they are and what drives them: their ideas, struggles, challenges, needs, and their dreams.

For the past three months, I have been working with TACSI to try and unearth social entrepreneurs working in Adelaide. It has proven to be quite challenging to identify these local change agents, as the field of social entrepreneurship in Adelaide is perhaps not developed to the extent that it is in other places around the world. Therefore people might be new to the language and not readily identify themselves as social entrepreneurs. Which begs the question: how does one find these social entrepreneurs who don´t identify themselves as such?

Nonetheless, we've been in contact with some quite inspiring individuals (who may or may not self-identify as a social entrepreneur). It's been very exciting to meet all these people and to learn about their experiences and their ideas for the future.

We decided to bring everyone together for our Social Entrepreneurs Picnic. The Picnic was designed as an informal gathering where we could learn through dialogue what the current landscape of social entrepreneurship in Adelaide looks like. As it was a Picnic, everyone brought their favorite edible delights to share.

At our Picnic, we were joined by Benny Callaghan from the Australian School for Social Entrepreneurs, based in Sydney. Benny brought with him a unique perspective on "who is" a social entrepreneur and how we can support them. With this in mind, we staged a so called Fish-Bowl exercise, where we invited Benny and our CEO Brenton Caffin to host an open discussion about what support for social entrepreneurs might look like. This was a unique opportunity for all participants to exchange perspectives, which led to some very interesting conversations, some of which translated directly into help and advice, tips and pointers.

We structured the rest of the afternoon according to the World Café model, a facilitation method which we use often at the KaosPilots. The World Café enables participants to foster collaborative dialogue and tap into the shared intelligence of a group, in order to create next steps for the future.

The key questions for the World Cafe session were: “What are the challenges facing social entrepreurs?” and “How can we support social entrepreneurs in Adelaide?”. With this we meant the big "we", in what ways could not only TACSI, but society in general, contribute to the support of social entrepreneurship? It was fascinating to see such a diverse group of people coming together to explore the topic, what it means to us, and what can be done to support it's growth here in Adelaide. We discussed various possibilities for both on-line and off-line support, the pro's and cons about the use of social media, and soon we came to see that the needs of the social entrepreneurs in Adelaide, aren't that different from anywhere else in the world. Perhaps the biggest issue for social entrepreneurs anywhere is that they feel isolated and somehow, abnormal.

To put a finer point on this, Benny extolled one of the real beauties of the School for Social Entrepreneurs: when the students come together once a week, they get to share their ideas with people like them. Instead of constantly talking about their ideas to spouses, children, the postman, they're surrounded by people who share the passion and conviction that drives them. For once a week they don't feel like 'freaks'.

From hearing a more focussed discussion about challenges and support, people were immediately thinking of who they should introduce to one another. This was particularly rewarding to see, as these new relationships began to flower and bear fruit (it was a picnic, after all).

Looking back on our Picnic, I believe there is fertile soil for social entrepreneurship in Adelaide, as it seems we're nurturing a very unique community of practitioners, coming from different backgrounds to bring different perspectives to the conversation. Importantly, there was a shared willingness and desire to meet again, where hopefully we'll continue to turn 'talking' into 'doing'. On my way home from the event, one quote by Margaret Mead came to mind: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.”

Right now it feels like the ball is in our court, that it will be up to TACSI to take on a leadership role in this space. Yet, I'm also hoping, and I'll not be surprised if a few people take their own initiative and begin to form the foundations for a thriving community. It's an exciting time for changemakers everywhere but maybe, especially here.

Piecing the Puzzle Together

Carolyn Lockett — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 15:30:00 +1000

The definite highlight of my fourth week with the family project was our free family festival. The hours of party planning and event management more than paid off. I believe Sarah, Chris, myself; families and volunteers all walked away having learned something about friends, family, neighbours, or ourselves. The festival allowed people to put the stress of day-to-day life aside and gave space to see people in a different light. It was so refreshing to see parents walk away with a sense of pride that they had been able to share a special day together without the added stress of cost. I think there was room for further improvements or developments in running a family festival however overall it was agreed that the day was a huge success

So where to now? 25 dinners and 15 ethnographies later my head is spinning with possibilities and the complexities that surround family life. What is family thriving, or more importantly what does thriving mean to our families? I’ve now spent hours reading articles that talk about wellbeing, resilience or strong families, however the focus with all of these words is generally on the present and how the past has impacted, with little research or enquiry in to the future or a vision for families. The problem we started out with in the Family Thriving Project was based around the growing numbers of families entering the child protection system. And once these families enter the system how do we get them out? During my time as a Supervisor and Social Worker working with new mums and babies “at risk” we often were able to mediate risk and increase the protective factors however the stumbling block always remained the same. How do we enable these families to build their own support networks from the inside out? Sure we can refer from service to service but like I’ve said in previous blogs the person-to-professional relationship will never replace the need for person-to-person support.

When considering the concept of family thriving it is also vital that we explore how families can create a vision or pathway towards something they know nothing about. Life can quickly become isolated and insular for people/families so how can we create opportunities to learn, explore and visualise what could be? It was clear at the family festival that there is a desire for more input and idea’s for families, idea’s that can bring excitement, hope and motivation.

So now we start the task of fitting all the pieces of the puzzle together! Literature, service examples both local and international, and most importantly our experiences of walking the walk with families, will all combine to create the Radical Redesign Project.

Stay tuned! So many more thoughts and feelings to come!

Defending social innovation

Erin Green — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:45:00 +1000

Recently I found myself in the strange position of defending social innovation to a committed community development worker. It was a strange position because I come from a community development background and his position was much the same as the one I held myself before I started this job only 6 months ago.

Good community development is often all about social innovation. We look at a situation, we sit down with community members to hear their stories and ideas, we are flexible, responsive and work with and for communities instead of doing 'to' them. Together we look for sustainable ideas, enterprising and innovative approaches and we prototype and test and prototype and test to get a project or system that fits. Good community development is about depth, about people, about sustainability. Of course, not all community development is good but when it is good it is great, creating sustainable positive change in people's lives.

When I first heard people talking about 'social innovation' I was a cynic. Wasn't this exactly what we, in the community sector, had been doing for years? 'Social innovation' sounded like an attempt to repackage this work and make it the latest trend for policy-makers. My critic just the other day echoed my earlier opinion, wasn't all this buzz around social innovation just a fad that ignored the good work already being done by the community sector?

To be honest, my answer, even now, is yes and no. There is a buzz around social innovation and, as with any 'new' wave there are lots of people interested in catching a ride. So yes, sometimes they cry wolf (or in this case 'look at my social innovation') and there's not much depth there. But good work is being done and it's not all in the community development sector.

Social innovation in community development is a huge part of what I'll call, for want of a better word, 'real' social innovation. The work with and for communities in the community development sector has developed some amazing answers to social needs because that's what social innovation is for - social impact and better lives for real people. But for me the umbrella of social innovation has to be about more than just community development. It has to include the work being done in the public sector and in legislation, not to mention the hundreds of social entrepreneurs who often don't even identify themselves with this space at all.

One of my critic's key points was that social innovation practices (and his definition of social innovation as community development) needs to stay underground to prevent governments from quashing good ideas before they even get off the ground. And I agree, often this is the case. Government funding and reporting structures can have exactly this affect (and people working in government are frequently the first to agree). But this is exactly why social innovation needs to be about more than the projects being done by organisations in the community development sector - some of the greatest social innovations in Australian history have needed governments and, particularly, legislation in order to have a profound impact on our lives (I'm thinking here of everything from women's suffrage, lesbian & gay rights to plastic bag bans and solar power rebates).

Why social innovation is necessary (and necessarily a broader church than just community development) is to help create those enabling environments that make governments and communities codesigners of solutions, where social entrepreneurs can operate in a supportive taxation environment (for example) and where all those great lessons learned from the community development sector can keep us from recreating the wheel and instead guide all of us interested in the social good (but not working directly in a community development organisation) in what works and what hasn't.

So I guess I'm thankful to that critic, he gave me a lot to think about, about what is working and what isn't in social innovation. And it is a mix of both.

I know there's a long, bumpy road ahead and social innovation will have its failures and some superficial wins but, at base, what we're looking for is nothing less than a new order, a different eco-system for approaching and creating social change. Because social innovation isn't just something it is nice to have. It's an urgent and necessary response to the complex web of wicked problems we're facing right now.

Let the judging begin!

Erin Green — Thu, 03 Jun 2010 15:03:00 +1000

With a weighty tome of 258 applications, our Bold Ideas Better Lives Challenge Judging Panel are engaged in a herculean feat as they read, discuss and score. And there's only a month til you find out what they decide!

With ideas ranging across the social innovation spectrum we're currently buried deep in research as we look at what's really innovative, what could have impact and whether implementation is feasibile.

Watch this space because in July you'll see just what Australia has come up with, which unmet social needs are high on the public national agenda in 2010 and just how they think those issues should be addressed.

We'll be sharing the pitches of all our applicants and you'll be able to comment on those ideas as well as celebrate the lucky few who make it to our final shortlist.

Those shortlisted applicants will have three months to develop a full business plan for implementation of their project and in October our judges will meet again to decide just who TACSI will be investing in for Challenge 2010.