A is for an Inclusive Community apple
Reminder: Next Monday, Oct 18 - Election Café at the Art Gallery. More details
Music programs for youth. Inclusive community. Turn Northern Breweries into multi-purpose facility. An Air Quality Sault committee. These ideas and more were discussed on Wednesday during the first ever virtual café.
Election candidates and citizens from across the city met to play an Innovation Game® called Prune the Product Tree to come with ideas and prioritize them to create a vibrant community. Innovation Games® are the "seriously fun way to do serious business - seriously". Companies like Cisco, a Fortune 500 company use these Games for strategic planning and product development. I've used Innovation Games in my work with teams and business executives as well with impressive results.
And now, communities. The premise behind these events are that given the chance, people will make a meaningful contribution. Given a creative, collaborative environment to work in, we as a community will get better results.
How the game works, as explained by Derek Wade, one of the professionally trained Innovation Games® facilitators:
Thank you and welcome to the game!My name is Derek and I’ll be your facilitator.We’re going to be playing a collaborative game to help the city of Sault St. Marie.In the main window, you see a tree, and some apples to the upper left.This tree represents the growth of a vibrant, healthy Sault Ste. Marie.The apples represent ideas and projects that will help support that growth.Apples near the trunk (bottom) of the tree provide quick benefit, and can be grown easily.Apples near the branches (top) of the tree provide longer-term benefit, but might not be so easy to grow.Your job is to place apples on the tree where you think they will provide the most benefit.You’ll find that the tree has some initial apples to help get you started.You can move these around to where you like them.You can even delete them by moving them off the game board.There are a limited number of apples that this tree can support. So you will need to collaborate with your fellow players.
Youth were well represented, to no surprise. 14 year old Matt Kot dove in head first, sharing ideas and encouraging everyone else to do the same:
Matt Kot: I am making another apple!Matt Kot: The College! The youth go to college and darn right they have 90% employment rate!Matt Kot: we should be proud of the college, Algoma UMatt Kot: Okay then, this tree is pretty much the future of the Sault.Matt Kot: The apples represent certain factorsMatt Kot: factors that will help us propel to greatness.Matt Kot: Greatness this city can use!
So what was the result? For me, the biggest outcome was observing the engaged, meaningful dialogue happening between people across our city. This small experiment gave a taste of what is possible if we were to scale these activities to involve thousands of citizens:
Kelly (Ward 3 Candidate): the only thing is i would like to see more people participate….more people=more ideas=better more improved treeDebbie (Mayoral Candidate): I agree KellyDebbie: However once more people find out about these opportunities I believe it will grow.
In a future post, I'll share my plan for how we can tackle apathy and disconnect in our democratic process and tap into the huge potential that lies within each citizen of Sault Ste. Marie.
Meanwhile, there is one more Election Café coming up, this time in person at the Art Gallery, 6 pm on Monday, Oct 18. Local food, civic speed dating and more Innovation Games® await. More details
Results from the two games:
Here is a snippet of the Ward 1-3 innovation game, sped up for your viewing pleasure. You'll see apples being placed on the board, and plenty of discussion in the chat. I recommend watching the video in full screen to follow the chat.
Posted by Gerry Kirk
