Reflections from UnSchool Christchurch
This is a run-down of my experience at the UnSchool Christchurch Fellowship, including some highlights in terms of the content sessions. If you’re into tools and processes, you might enjoy this follow-on post.
Towards the end of 2016, I came across a Facebook post advertising a learning programme based on systems interventions, sustainability and disruptive design. What a dream boat! With my mahi (work) at Lifehack, I’ve spent my fair share of time and brainpower trying to work out how to intervene in the complexity of the New Zealand youth wellbeing system in particular. I’ve struggled with figuring out exactly where to intervene in the system—in particular because there’s no one right answer, and thus was particularly curious about part of the curriculum. I decided to apply hoping that it would sharpen my mind and tools on where to invest my energy, head and heart most usefully.
The programme is based on a three-part design-centric methodology: Mining, Landscaping, Building (repeat). Developed by sustainability provocateur and designer, Dr. Leyla Acaroglu, it seeks to use design as a catalyst for positive social and environmental change and is part of her work at UnSchool. The UnSchool itself is a learning and educational initiative for those seeking alternatives to the status quo (both in terms of learning and application of the learnt).
Ahead of the time spent kanohi-ki-te-kanohi (face-to-face) in Ōtautahi/Christchurch, we got tasked to complete some of the online sessions of the Disruptive Design Methodology. It proved as a useful primer to get the brain going—by front-loading some of the content I could ask more succinct questions the second time we covered it.
The Setup
The cohort was a colourful mix of people from different backgrounds and countries, some of whom I know, but most of them I’d never met before. Public health specialists, local politicians, humans working for big corporations or Crown entities, business owners, consultants, students, life coaches, designers, market researchers and more were amongst them.
On the first day of the Fellowship, following a round of Pecha Kucha — a quick-fire round of personal introductions (here’s a link to mine), we went around the room to each give our perspective on how to shift to a sustainable world.
Hearing from every person, what was evident to me is the bias we each have and how our view of the world influences what we think needs to shift. It was fascinating to hear other people’s perceived starting points to shift towards one-planet living: limiting human population growth, shifting manufacturing systems, tackling social isolation through building community, shifting economic systems, focusing on building great cities (as it’s the prediction that 66% the human population will be living in cities by 2050), grassroots action, eradicating debt, stronger accountability for corporations, positive narratives in the media, building a sense of agency, personal responsibility — and more.
Personally, whether it’s through theory-of-change questioning (have a look at these prompts here), Five Whys or other forms of root-cause inquiry, I often end up with capitalism and mass consumption as the main culprit. Having spent a good bunch of time thinking about this, I’m aware that this is the lens which I apply to my change work, unless challenged otherwise.
Game Theory and Gamification as Drivers of Engagement
One poignant session was on game theory and gamification. As someone who’s spent years in advertising, the word gamification makes me feel a nauseous… so I purposefully decided to open my brain to be challenged.
Gamification is using game-like mechanics in a non-gaming environment to incentivise behaviour. These may be points, badges, levels, leaderboards, points, challenges etc. Essentially, they’re ways to drive engagement. Paired with a compelling narrative, clear goals and rules, challenging but achievable, and accelerated feedback, they provide great food for thought for those leading impact ventures.
Game theory (in contrast to gamification) is the economic theory of incentivising behaviour in humans when it comes to strategy and how people interact.
Crucially, for change-related mahi (work), it’s about the point where game theory and gamification overlap.
Personally, something I’ve thought about a lot is the corporations’ power to hire advertising agencies to apply both game theory and gamification effectively to manipulate or drive human behaviour. The slickness that comes with it is sadly often unparalleled in the social space — and there’s often a resistance to apply such mechanisms to social ventures. The truth is though, that it works. So what needs to shift in the community arena to feel like we can apply the big players’ tactics to our work?
Industry Example: Fashion
Jennifer Whitty, fellow Wellingtonian and fashion lecturer at Massey’s College of the Creative Arts, ran an awesome session and workshop on the impact of the fashion industry. In New Zealand alone, 100 million kilos of clothes are going to landfill per year. As the world’s second most polluting industry, Jennifer reminded us that ‘garments are of the land, and we are stewards not masters’ (a provocation taken from @circtran2016).
Do we see ourselves as stewards, masters or victims of the fashion industry?
She further provoked us how we can achieve change through design. Quoting systems theorist Buckminster Fuller, she asked how we could build a new model that makes the existing one obsolete? In her instance, she’s taking her position in education and research and business to explore the space between the different players. This has resulted in Space Between, a social enterprise repurposing garments to prevent them from going to landfill is one of their many approaches and projects involving products, services and systems to create systemic change in industry.
For Jennifer and her team at Space Between, this has put her in the space between (geddit?) education, research and enterprise. It uses an action-research model (ie running something in the real world, as opposed to a lab, or only in theory) in the enterprise space with findings that feed back into her academic world.
Her workshop left me with the following question: What do we each know enough about as individuals, the different worlds that overlap for us and around us, which present interesting approaches and points of interventions? What domain expertise do we each have, which we should make better use of to create more positive impact in this world?
The entire week was sprinkled with thought-provoking content sessions, site visits (from XCHC to city tours), external facilitators and talks (list below), great kōrero (conversation) and and other surprises… locust, anyone?
Here’s a (most likely incomplete) list of people we heard from during the week:
Leyla Acaroglu // Nick Gerritsen // Raf Manji — Councillor // Adam Hayward — Papa Hou // Preston Hegel — XCHC // Brie Sherow — Ohu Development // Juliet Arnott — Rekindle // Ryan / Gap Filler // Court Theater // Rebecca Mills // Jen Whitty — Space Between & Massey University // Fi — Senorita AweSumo // Ben Wigley / BANQER // the Live the Dream crew // Anteater //
Conclusion
For me, UnSchool presented a great opportunity to hone the systems-thinking part of my brain in particular. Whilst we did cover design and sustainability, it definitely felt like systems work was the dominating topic—which worked really well for me. However as someone who’s already immersed in the New Zealand world of social innovation, applied design and systems work, there weren’t too many surprises for me personally when it came to the speakers (people I hadn’t heard about, or in fact didn’t already know in person). Having chatted more to the UnSchool team, I’ve since learnt that this was due to New Zealand’s challenging geographic location, where it’s more difficult to bring it people from the nearby regions (which aren’t that nearby at all). Most of the other Fellowships appear to have mentors from further afield (literally). That said, it did prove as a useful investment of time and energy when it came to learning content, picking up new tools through theory and practice, and applying them to real-world situations.
My main takeaway is a process which I’ll seek to apply at the next opportune situation. I’ve summed it up here (with some background of how I got there).
Thank You
A huge thanks to all the people who helped me get to UnSchool by generously supporting my PledgeMe, Enspiral bucket and providing me with a place to sleep.
Thank you Jason, Sam, Jade, Ella, Alex, Hannah, Robb, Alanna, James, Becca, Illana, Lani, Caroline, Jody, Silvia, Dmitry, Carolina, Rachel & the Shift crew, Nanz, Nina, Maddy, Dan, Lee, Shane, George, Anna, Ants, Mix, Dave, Francesca, Beka, Bart, Craig, Genevieve, James, Mikey, Clare, Pete, Teddy, Thomas, Marianne, Billy, Enspiral Accounting, Rose, Kate, Susan, Lewis and the Parata-Goodall whānau.
Applications for the upcoming Fellowship in San Francisco are currently open. Scholarships are available too. Thanks to the UnSchool team for all the hard work, great speakers, delicious kai and all the surprises.
Check out my post on Tools and Processes for Systems Work.
