Open Society Foundations London Place-based co-learning and co-design for collaboration

We spent a fantastic couple of days of Curiosity Incubator | Accelerator for Good co-learning and co-design at Open Society Foundations with Barry Varcoe and team, working through the radical “how” of how space can be designed and purposed to allow and support collaboration, cooperation and impactful work on our most pressing challenges.

One major theme of our work for the past 10 years on the application of behavioural science and public innovation methodologies for good is how philanthropic organisations can use this learning to make their work more aimed at the impact they’re looking to achieve: more in conversation with the outside world and more thoughtful about the specific “how?” of the work they do. 

Re-purposed, recycled sleepers set the tone at OSF London - sustainability framing with space

Building on past work with MacArthur Foundation and European Climate Foundation, what I loved about this work with Barry’s team at Open Society Foundations is the opportunity to think through what Place-based impact and co-creation means when that place and space is for an organisation, rather than municipality. 

There’s a lot of rhetoric about how to connect the embodied realities of places with outcomes for people - but as always in the Curiosity Incubator, we’re super interested in the “how” rather than the rhetoric alone.

I can’t wait to hear more about how what we learnt together this week about the intersection of place- and space-based design can be applied to the Purpose-focused work of OSF adapts and grows over the months to come.

More here on our work at the Curiosity Incubator. Onwards!

Internal meeting room became the Curiosity Incubator for 2 days: the glass doors meant colleagues got some key insights to how to build coalitional cognition in passing!