PROTOTYPING THE 21ST CENTURY TOWN HALL
MISSION ROADMAP
Impact Hub Birmingham October 2015
Produced by
Andy Reeve Immy Kaur Indy Johar Joyjit Sarkar Dan Zastawny Indi Kaur
@ImpactHubBrum birmingham.impacthub.net facebook.com/ImpactHubBirmingham
Contents Overview Our Journey to date Birmingham Impact Hub Birmingham The Global Community Our Evolution Evolution of the Impact Hub Network Startup Ecosystem A New Age Taking a Systems & Movements View Prototyping the 21st Century Town Hall Impact Hub Birmingham: Town Hall Model Dynamic Structure 2015-2016 Developmental plan 2015-2016 Mission Roadmap Open Project Nights TEDx & City Camp Birmingham 2016 Systems Change Accelerator DemoDev - Data Led Housing Open Co. Reimagining Legitimacy Mission Birmingham Residency Dark Matters: Unleashing the #Powerofus Team & Contacts
4 5 9 10 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 23 25 26 27 29 30 32 33 34 36 37
We believe those that are willing to dream, dare and have a heart for a better Birmingham need a home to collaborate and discuss, challenge and be challenged, provoke and be provoked; a home where paradox and contradictions can cohabit with ease. Impact Hub Birmingham is a network of amazing citizens, makers, doers, entrepreneurs, activists and dreamers committed to building a better Birmingham and a better world. Powered by a 6000 sq. ft. collaborative workshop, the Hub is an engine for passion, learning and outcomes where together, we can build a better city.
IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 3
We find ourselves amidst a new class of wicked societal challenges, from structural inequality to in-work poverty. Birmingham is an archetype of the future the UK is facing its levels of economic disadvantage, material deprivation and health inequality are indicators of this reality. The scale and nature of these challenges provides an opportunity for disruptive innovation with one of the youngest and most diverse populations in the EU, Birmingham is well placed to reimagine and remake what is possible. This new future is being realised through a new generation of change technologies from open innovation, open source practices and crowdsourcing; to a new wave of movements disrupting our power to make society, democracy and the very means of organising, and doing. These shifts are creating the capacity for us to rethink how we address systemic challenges. We know there is no shortage of will, tools, resources and innovation around us, the real question is how we organise for transformational change.
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We believe it is time to unleash this new power of us, all of us. This will need to be a revolution that reimagines what the ‘us’ is: dissolving the public, civic and private sector divide; disrupting democratic legitimacy and focusing on shared wealth, interdependence, interoperability and a fairer city for all. This is a revolution requiring us to reimagine the future of business, the future of the state and the future of the third sector. To reimagine how they come together to solve our most pressing challenges.
Impact Hub Birmingham are prototyping a new ‘us.’ The 21st Century Town Hall is a place to collaboratively reimagine and remake our shared future, together.
OUR JOURNEY TO DATE
IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 5
Over the last four years we brought the first TEDx event to the city and this continues to nurture, develop and grow one of the largest UK TEDx communities, with some 2500 people participating since 2013. TEDxBrum was one of the main catalysts for founding a permanent home to grow a community based on ideas, collaboration, innovation and trust. Many of the Impact Hub Birmingham team came together through this network.
TEDxBrum 2013 ‘Marking the Map’
TEDxBrum 2012 ‘The Next Revolution’ 2012
TEDxBrum 2014 ‘DIY’
The new Library of Birmingham hosted the biggest event to date with 15 speakers, 6 performers, 350 attendees, and a 50 person team it was the largest and most successful event to date. The desire for a permanent space & movement for change was unleashed.
Held at Millennium Point, TEDxBrum grew to include: 12 speakers, 5 performers, 350 attendees, a team of 25+ and over 1000 view the live stream. This event confirmed the huge appetite for ideas / innovation in the city.
The first TEDx in Birmingham at Mac Birmingham brought a founding team and community of 100 attendees and was live streamed to over 500 viewers.
2013
2014
June 2014 Seeding Impact Hub Birmingham Dinners, Talks, Workshops. A 12 month series of open dinners, coffees, workshops and talks as an open call to co design the vision and future community. Over 250 people took part in this process.
May - August 2014 Impact Hub Birmingham Pop Up
Pop - Up space in Brindleyplace which also hosted a civic accelerator programme. Provided a live prototype to test appetite for a permanent space / community.
Mission Birmingham
We are a mission focused organisation. Our mission to tangibly demonstrate a future democratic Birmingham - a democracy of making the future not just voting for it. This mission is bigger and more important than us. It is a shared and open mission. We believe this requires us to imagine a new economy of societal change together - from unleashing the power of all of us as a movement of change; to how we finance it and how we legitimise it.
Making Impact Hub Birmingham Impact Hub Birmingham was co-designed and co-made with over 100 makers. From the architect’s brief to building the open source furniture, the hub was visioned, funded, designed and made by many.
2015
17th April - 10th May 2015 Demo.B Opening Festival
Marking the launch of Impact Hub Birmingham, Demo.B was an open, co-curated festival with 30 + events, 500+ participants and makers, where we seeded, explored, celebrated and demonstrated how to build a better Birmingham together.
We are at the convening, mapping and relationship building stage of developing this movement and institutional infrastructure - the Town Hall for Change Makers. 2015 / 2016 will see Open Project Nights, Fellowship & City Camp begin to bring the mission to life.
OPENING
2016
TEDxBrum 2016 City Camp Birmingham
Seeding Mission Birmingham, building a slow hack, a series of labs, events, spaces to grow the intelligence, tools, movement and partnerships to explore the 21st Century Town Hall for system change.
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Birmingham Curiosity breeds change and innovation, and with one of the youngest most diverse populations in the world and a track record of bringing together great minds to develop ideas, share inspiration and drive change - Birmingham questions everything and always looks for new ways of doing things. A creative energy pulses through the city. Yet despite its intellectual and cultural heritage and youthful, innovative spirit, Birmingham remains a city with a self effacing and down-to-earth charm – never boastful, never arrogant but curious, enthusiastic and focused on making things happen. Mirroring the modest nature of its people, it is a city that gets on with it. The power of collaboration is behind some of Birmingham’s biggest achievements. In the 18th century, for example, scientists, inventors and natural philosophers Erasmus Darwin, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Joseph Priestley and Josiah Wedgwood would gather in Birmingham and engage in intellectual debates - their conversations were the brainpower behind the Industrial Revolution.
The diversity of the city’s residents brings a rich cultural mix to Birmingham, 30% of residents are of minority ethnic origin. And yet many of these residentsare facing real difficulties, with a significantly higher unemployment rate than the rest of the country and some of the highest levels of deprivation. With the city council being forced to cut spending, now is the time for a new breed of civic focused citizens to help shape the city we want to live in. THERE’S A FEELING IN THE CITY THAT ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE – providing a fertile environment for audacious ambitions, most inspired thoughts and great enterprising ideas to develop and grow.
‘In closing my account of Birmingham I must say that I have found more heartiness in their sympathy, more earnestness in their desire to forward my interests, and more friendliness at their firesides than in any town I have seen’ - James Watkins, 1853
A GLOBALLY COMPETITIVE, CONNECTED, DIVERSE AND INNOVATIVE CITY. A CITY WITH AN APPETITE FOR CHANGE
FUELLED BY YOUNG TALENT
FULL OF AMBITION
A CITY THAT BRINGS GREAT MINDS TOGETHER
INDEPENDENT CULTURE & FUSION IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 9
Impact Hub Birmingham Some of our achievements so far...
30+
People involved in Impact Hub Maker Team
686
backers raised
ÂŁ65,096 on Kickstarter
150+ People involved in Open Making
In the first 3 months...
80
new members joined
75
events held
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Some of our member organisations...
Part of a Global Community From a single space in Islington, London in 2005 the Impact Hub network has evolved into a global network of change makers taking joint action towards a single purpose: impact.
10,000 + Members
We are the world’s largest venturing movement geared towards embracing the impact economy.
400+ Startups
New startups and initiatives founded each year
68+ Impact Hubs
There are currently 80 operating hubs with another 30 in the pipeline in the next 2 years.
30% Annual Growth
We are currently growing at a rate of 30% globally
€100m+ Annual Revenue
Our members are generating €100m+ new revenues per year.
1,500+ jobs
Our members are creating more than 1500 new full time jobs per year
IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 11
OUR EVOLUTION
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1/ Evolution of Impact Hub Network INSPIRING, CONNECTED, SOCIALLY DRIVEN COMMUNITIES & REAL ESTATE MODEL
In 2005, Impact Hub Islington launched as a place to inspire, connect and catalyse impact between a community of like minded change-makers. Since then the Impact Hub has offered our members a unique ecosystem of resources, inspiration, and collaboration opportunities, all financed through a real-estate model, with flexible monthly memberships, low cost event hire and similar to a mobile phone package members purchase access in packages of time eg. 2 days / week, 3 days / week and unlimited hours per month and is a model which has supported the growth of over 65 Impact Hubs and with many more Impact Hubs in the pipeline. Community of like minded change makers Co-working Space
Membership Fee
Shared Infrastructure
Impact Hub Kuala Lumpur IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 13
Impact Hub Prague
Impact Hub Oakland
Impact Hub Westminster 14 \ PROTOTYPING THE 21ST CENTURY TOWN HALL
2/ Startup Ecosystem Agency
In 2010 the Impact Hub network recognised the time was right for the Impact Hub model to evolve - both at the network level and the business model of local Impact Hubs. At the local level we started to recognise that our community and the social enterprise market was increasingly ready for the next generation of infrastructure and support. To respond to this evolving context we witnessed the evolution of the Hub Venture Ecosystem model where the physical infrastructure of the Impact Hub was complemented by Hub Venture Funds, Hub Accelerators and Investment conferences like SoCap (Social Capital Markets). This ecosystem model has allowed Impact HUBs to build structural capacity to organise, attract and socialise social venturing talent around the world.
Time
Payment
Equity
Community of like minded changemakers
Investment
Accelerator Fund Co-working Space
Membership Fee
Shared Infrastructure IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 15
Impact Hubs have evolved from their roots at Hub Islington where first generation HUBs co-visioned the physical environment with members to create rootedness and shared belonging; designed the physical place to bias pro-social behaviours and serendipity; and focused on hosted & facilitating the human network as opposed to the real-estate. We have focused on creating the conditions for innovation and hybridisation.
A NEW AGE
We are seeing great new practices emerge focused on driving local impact and shifting meaningful outcomes in our cities and neighbourhoods, both globally within the Impact Hub network and outside of it. At Impact Hub Birmingham we are discovering, and prototyping, how we hardwire them into the core DNA of us as an institution - in our financial model, in our impact data, in our talent management, in our governance and accountability, in our programmes, events and interventions - this is our challenge. The wicked problems and challenges we face as a civilisation cannot be solved without reinventing the industrial institutions which gave birth to them. Nor are they challenges which can be resolved by individual social startups alone. We need to drive systemic local renewal through collective outcomes, where the solution exists within a framework of new institutions and collaborations applying new policy, finance and data instruments.
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Some examples... IMPACT HUB OAKLAND Oakland, CA
Intentional place based focus on Oakland, looking at 21st Century civil rights movements.
PEOPLES LIBERTY Cincinnati, OH
A philanthropic lab that brings together civic minded talent. Investing directly in people, creating new replicable models for grantmakers / foundations in cities.
OPEN WORKS Lambeth, London
Local residents collaborating to build a sustainable participatory future.
IMPACT HUB ZURICH Zurich, Switzerland
‘Prototyping the Future of Business’. An evolution in the intentional focus of Hub’s in different cities around the world.
IMPACT HUB AFRICA Accra, Kigali +
IMPACT HUB UK Islington, Brixton, Kings Cross, Westminster, Birmingham
Founding London network expanded outside London in 2015, and now there is an interest from a number of UK cities.
New wave of Impact Hub founders, communities and spaces in emerging markets. IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 17
Taking a Systems & Movements View FROM SILOS TO SYSTEMS
The wicked problems and challenges we face as a civilisation can neither be resolved in silo nor without reinventing our industrial age institutional infrastructure which gave birth to them. 
 This new world of messy interdependency requires us to progress from the comforting illusion of a single causal solution towards one recognising the role of system change and shifts; where the solution exists in a framework of new institutions, policies, startups, new finance & data tools and instruments.
CHANGE THROUGH A SYSTEMS LENS
Social innovation, viewed through a system change lens as opposed to being reduced to social enterprise, is reliant upon the system being able to collaborate across multiple public, private, civic and independent organisations. No single organisation can do this alone. This transition requires the collective & collaborative leadership of multiple institutions - working together to build this shared institutional infrastructure, invest in building a shared language, shared taxonomy, shared and open data, shared understanding and comprehension, and shared leadership and governance models in a system, along with a shared social contract. These are all necessary preconditions for defining and reaching shared outcomes, system awareness and investment and wealth driven by interventions. This presents us with the key institutional transformation challenge - how we move from silos of organisations to impact systems. 18 \ PROTOTYPING THE 21ST CENTURY TOWN HALL
MOVEMENTS FOR CHANGE
Social innovation is the collective effort to face entrenched social issues through the collaborative and coordinated action of the public, private, third sectors and citizens at large. Today most social issues (for instance poverty, social exclusion, quality of health care) and macro challenges (such as ageing, climate change, the sustainability of welfare systems) interlink with one another and drive a cycle of deprivation. Social ills cannot be faced one at a time, in isolation, by adopting single points of intervention. For instance, if we want to increase educational attainment in a neighbourhood or in a country the question is not simply one of whether more funding should be allocated to just schools. It is necessary to intervene in multiple domains affecting education in the area. These might include investing in prenatal nutrition, establishing breakfast clubs, setting reading clubs to mentor pupils, mums’ associations to support young mothers, youth circles to provide peer support and developing new technology to facilitate communication between parents and teachers. This means that we need a new systems approach, in which the public, private and third sector and citizens work together as a movement for change. In such a movement, the actors will operate together to understand and address how to face entrenched social issues in the most effective way by co-designing, co-funding, co-delivering and coevaluating innovative solutions.
Prototyping the 21st Century Town Hall NEXT GENERATION IMPACT HUB: OUTCOMES BASED Impact Hub Birmingham seeks to prototype a new sandboxed, legitimate, civically accountable institution for data, people and ideas to collaborate to make a better Birmingham. We often talk about collaboration - but traditional institutions such as universities, corporations and local authorities are struggling to create the rich, safe legitimate, trusted and sandboxed environments for shared innovation, with a business model, and civic legitimacy, essential for the advancement of a collaborative economy & shared wealth. We recognise this reality, and over the last 2 years have been building this archetypical legitimate, accountable and safe ‘third place’ for sandboxed, open, collaborative, contextually driven advancement of what a next generation Impact Hub could be for Birmingham. Impact Hub Birmingham is a safe, open local platform for researchers, entrepreneurs, activists, policy creators, journalists, geeks and public intellectuals to come together to collaborate and prototyping a 21st Century Town Hall for Birmingham.
IMAGINE... A Town Hall for collaborative change makers - creating an open and mass collaborative platform for citizens, entrepreneurs, activists, artists, policy makers, geeks, executives and investors to work together and address real system challenges and drive outcomes which shift the reality of our local neighbourhoods and cities. A Town Hall where changemakers are compensated on the basis of the collective outcomes they achieve in addressing city challenges. A Town Hall where a cohort of entrepreneurs, executives, citizens and civil servants collectively raise investments for a system of interventions - spanning social platforms, products, services and policy and where citizen movement drives collective impact. A Town Hall for change making focused on addressing the systemic challenges our local communities face today - tackled together by youth enterprise, local educational attainment levels, ecological diversity, healthy living levels, circular economy etc
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Impact Hub Birmingham: Town Hall Model Our ambition is to systematically align our business model to the mission evolving the financial architecture from being a tax on social entrepreneurs & changemakers to being a product of meaningful outcomes and impact in building a better Birmingham. The key components to our model include:
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SYSTEM FINANCING
Societal Change and Impact needs a new model of investing - one which transcends start up & co-working investment and financing. The hub needs to developing new skills, capability, models, methods & practices to structure investments for system change - to become a new class of intermediary between agents of change and the liability and opportunity holders. We increasingly believe this future requires us to reimagine a new model of “derivatives” focused on system change; experimenting with a synthesis of direct, oblique and outcome based returns, using a fusion of tools from equity, debt, grant and delivery contracts.
LEGITIMATE SPACES
Societal Change and Impact with multi actor reality needs new spaces and models of legitimacy – one which deeply acknowledges our reality requiring us to include and move beyond representative democracy and the state – this a future which requires us to re-imagine legitimacy based on radical relational openness and massive crowd participation – unleashing & democratising the power to create.
MOVEMENTS OF CHANGE
Change can no longer be the responsibility or the capability of a single actor, organisation, institution or domain — Change needs movements, movements of actors both on the demand and supply side of innovation and intervention. Change in this world cannot be designed as a strategy written for an organisation but the investment in growing shared intent, open mission, shared language and collective intelligence & actionability of a movement. Societal Change in the 21st Century requires us to reinvent the Hub as an accelerator from being focused on incubating discrete cohorts of start ups to a platform and convenor of movements across multiple actors, agents, citizens, corporates and institutions. This is movement of change grown on building shared language, shared consciousness, collective intelligence, collective design and the desire, appetite and capability for intrinsic change behaviours, technologies, practices, products and services. IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 21
Impact Hub Birmingham: Town Hall Model CIVIC LEGITIMACY & MANY TO MANY PARTICIPATION
OPEN CO.
+
SYSTEMICALLY COLLABORATIVE & OPEN AT THE CORE
MISSION BIRMINGHAM
+
OUTCOME FINANCED
COLLABORATIVE PHYSICAL & DIGITAL SPACE
COLLECTIVE OUTCOME BUYING PARTNERSHIP
EVENTS
COLLECTIVE IMPACT FUND
+
BUILDING COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
+
POWERED BY MANY
OPEN PROJECT
CITY CAMP
FELLOWSHIP
SYSTEM ACCELERATION
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DIVERSE REVENUE STREAMS Real Estate (Membership & Events) Open Consultancy
PROTOTYPING THE 21st CENTURY TOWN HALL Building civic infrastructure for collaborative impact. The Home for mass collective investment, intelligence, innovation & impact - powered by a new generation of programmes, environments, tools, techniques, practices, & massive interoperability designed to make change happen.
Dynamic Structure As a mission driven ecosystem we are looking at how to organise ourselves in order to deliver the maximum impact rather than maximum efficiency and profitability. To do this we feel there needs to be a new way of thinking and structuring our decision making, the role of autonomy and perception of risk.
Outcomes Focused
We are currently experimenting with a new form, which allows individuals a level of freedom and creativity whilst appreciating the level of risk some members of the team face.
MISSION BIRMINGHAM
This is a form built upon an architecture of self similar system frames which can be scaled up and down from the individual to government. Within the broadest frame of Impact Hub Birmingham we have four key frames: Culture, Financing, Legitimacy and Mission. Each one of these frames is then broken down into a project or activity which is actively aligned to our mission. Not everyone will have the same resolution of view of these frames. Just like how a high resolution image leaves a large memory footprint we feel that everyone in the team has a memory limit.
Convening
Fellowship
Vision
People
Collective Intelligence
CULTURE
LEGITIMACY
Values
Systems Financing FINANCING
Overloading individuals with the highest resolution for each frame only prevents them from performing at their best. Open Co.
Power of Us
Supply Chain Value
Impact Hub Model
IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 23
Dynamic Structure: Fractal Model By relinquishing some levels of detail individuals have more capacity for those roles and projects they are passionate about. In order for this to work it is imperative to build collective intelligence and trust throughout the team. A strong and ambitious mission needs to be framed consistently but flexibly to guide the organisation. This will allow team members to no longer worry about issues beyond their level of resolution and lend a sense of clarity and autonomy around what can and can’t be done in line with the mission. This is an evolutionary ecosystem in which frames can be broken down or added to as new opportunities are identified. The key stage is to identify the DNA from the organisational culture which needs to be replicated across any new frames. If a new project or opportunity does not fit into the existing frames then it should be discussed democratically. The group can them come to a consensus as to whether it should be adopted, spun into a different organisational frame or if the existing frames should be examined to see if they are still in line with the overall mission. As with much we pursuing at Impact Hub Birmingham this is an experitment in how to organsie ourselves and will require tweaking after feedback and reflection.
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2015-16 Development Plan The Impact Hub Birmingham Town Hall model will not be built in a single move.The town hall for changemakers can not just be transplanted from the pages of a strategy document, it has to be grown and evolved. Building the institutional capacity and shared environment for System change experiments will require investment in the capacity of the team, collective intelligence of the community, the structural development of shared senses and shared language. A safe, neutral space which empowers a collaborative culture must be grown and nurtured for a diverse group of people, and we must inclusively grow the collective intelligence of the whole city. From the beginning of founding Impact Hub Birmingham we have been seeding the steps of this strategy, as we move into 2016 we aim to develop and prototype the key practices, protocols and partnerships to build and unleash the Town Hall model. This will happen through an iterative and cumulative learning process which will be facilitated rather than managed and one which will grow organically. We aim to achieve this by investing in growing our community and focusing on a systems level understanding of complexity and outcomes. By prototyping ways to harness massive collaborative impact across Birmingham and in turn building the capacity to enact city wide systems change.
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2015-2016 Mission Roadmap & Key Themes Key Themes
URBAN INNOVATION
Key Prototype Steps
SYSTEMS CHANGE
1. Open Project Night - Convening 2. City Camp Birmingham - Collaborating 3. System Change Accelerator - Experimenting 4. Data Led Housing - Experimenting 5. Open Co. - Action Based Researching 6. Mission Birmingham Residency - Incubating Talent
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SOCIAL JUSTICE
1/ Open Project Night An open night at Impact Hub Birmingham for imagineers working on projects, ventures & ideas focused on unleashing a better us, a better Birmingham. Creatives, activists, entrepreneurs, dreamers, scientists, makers and doers, everyone is welcome to come along to add their vision of a better Birmingham. Impact Hub Birmingham was born in coffee shops, bars, libraries and parks. Basically anywhere we could get together and work on our vision. Now we want to be able to open up the space to as many people as possible to help them get their project, group or venture off the ground. Impact Hub Birmingham will open its doors every Monday night to host meetups, workshops, mini talks, plotting and planning sessions for a dynamic community of doers. As well as learn from others and build connections with those with a shared vision for the city.
MISSION BIRMINGHAM
KEY OUTCOME OF PROTOTYPE
Build legitimacy and discover the talented, driven and inspiring minds who need a shot. Someone to take a chance on them and help them on their mission. It’s these visionaries we will look to invite on our Fellowship program for 2016.
Convening
Fellowship
IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 27
2/ TEDxBrum & City Camp Birmingham 2016 We are living in an age where our reach and our ability to interact and impact at a global level is vast and unprecedented. In fact it could be argued it is currently more developed than our ability to sense and be conscious of the consequences of our actions and the impact. This reality is coming to an end, in an increasingly “smaller world” our impact is no longer invisible or isolatable and the feedback of destruction can no longer be isolated from our own homes, shores, and lives. The impacts of climate change, the banking crisis, voter disenfranchisement, terrorism, Fukushima — are all examples / products of complex system externalities, by-products born of this systemic institutional crisis. Change can no longer be the sole responsibility of one sector, business, hero entrepreneur or through a single magic bullet of a product, service, start up or policy. We are increasingly understanding that change has to be unleashed as the collective impact of interventions across a system and unlocked by a movement of changemakers. These changemakers need to span across multiple disciplines from citizen campaigns, corporates, policy makers, entrepreneurs, to NGOs, government and beyond. Hero social entrepreneurs and startups are not enough on their own, but all our investment and hopes are designed and placed on them. We can see innovations and progress all around us, a plethora of heroic black swan solutions, but we continue to be faced with the inability to scale, grow, govern or finance large scale change at the pace required.
We need to build a model of change that unlocks the #PowerofUs and a corresponding institutional infrastructure to match the scale of collaborative change required. This requires us to understand and build on the emerging tools and techniques of unleashing the power of us which are open, collaborative and sustainable - across business, government and NGO from crowdsourcing, open source communities, open innovation, impact capital, open data, social media, to social innovation. Alongside this we need to re-invent the corresponding institutional ‘dark matter’ to unlock new models of systems accounting, governance and financing & design of large scale system change to embed and truly unlock the power of us in and across our 21st century cities, towns and villages
Outcomes Focused MISSION BIRMINGHAM
Convening
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#PowerofUs: TEDx & City Camp 2016
The biggest TEDxBrum event to date, 2016 will see a TEDxBrum team welcome more than 15 speakers, 5 creative performances in a world class city centre space to explore the ideas around massive collaboration for place based change and renewal.
TEDxBrum will be followed by 3 days of talks, workshops, masterclasses, hacks and unconference space to build on ideas generated and create a space to unleash a community of venture activists from a wide range of sectors focused on building an #EpicBrum.
KEY OUTCOME OF PROTOTYPE
Change can no longer be the sole responsibility of one sector. In 2016 we will seed a new chapter of convening actors from across a range of sectors, disciplines and backgrounds. Continue to create new spaces and pipeline for ideas, talent and convening a community for system impact across Birmingham, building on the community grown through TEDxBrum, Impact Hub Birmingham & the FutureShift Festival. IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 29
3/ System Change Accelerator PROTOTYPE SYSTEMS ACCELERATOR: CHILDCARE This proposition is for an outcomes-based accelerator focussed on re-thinking childcare in Birmingham, led by Impact Hub Birmingham in partnership with Hub Launchpad, to explore a prototype for systems based impact acceleration. We are increasingly recognising start ups alone have limited impact and we must explore innovations, interventions and levers across the system.
The Civic Foundry showed how locally rooted ventures with multiple outcomes for the neighbourhood can unlock local resources that too often lie dormant whether space, talent, time or financial resources. Bringing such diverse angles together with the perspectives of innovative employers, educationalists and funders – amongst others – is the opportunity at hand.
The opportunity
The accelerator recognises that childcare has become unaffordable to many, that it is insufficiently flexible to cater to increasingly diverse demand and that it fails to generate better outcomes for children in disadvantaged situations. This latter issue is of particular relevance to Birmingham given recent child poverty data revealed by the Birmingham Child Poverty Commission. Both market-led provision and public sector attempts to improve outcomes have fallen short – radical innovation is required. Our approach also recognises that fundamentally new business and value models are required. Children’s centres, though successful in improving outcomes for deprived families, face the constant pressure of precarious budget arrangements. Innovative approaches from elsewhere, such as parent coops in New Zealand and the US, show that parent-led, peer-to-peer models can fill an important gap with a flexible provision that suits the needs of working parents. We now need to question whether such models can be adapted to the diverse needs of the UK. 30 \ PROTOTYPING THE 21ST CENTURY TOWN HALL
Outcomes Focused MISSION BIRMINGHAM
Convening
Fellowship
APPROACH
Pre-acceleration Research (Nov-Feb 2015)
It is clear that there are many perspectives on the future of childcare: users have a wide range of aspirations and needs, regulatory requirements are complex and there are many potential intervention points to enable change. Therefore we propose to start with a preacceleration phase that draws these multiple perspectives into a semi-structured open enquiry process: bringing together parents, professionals, social innovators, potential funders, regulators and those who hold the future liabilities of a failing system – whether from Birmingham City Council, housing associations or Government. This phase will use approaches such as collaborative user ethnography, systems mapping, open data research, international best practice research, ‘Open Project Night’ workshops with partners, open calls for ideas etc. This will enable us to develop tangible insights into the needs and opportunities, build partnerships, co-produce ‘scripts’ for possible start-up ventures and identify relevant metrics for success. Crucially it will generate momentum for a range of potential programme participants focussed not just on individual start-ups but on a wide range of systemic interventions.
Acceleration (March-Sept 2016)
Following this stage, we will organise an open call for proposals both from people within the pre-acceleration network and beyond. Following a selection process we will work with a cohort of 10 -15 diverse teams of innovators in the childcare space. Locally rooted (grand)parent groups, entrepreneurs, public sector intrapreneurs, hands-on policy innovators, corporates and more. The intent is to create a collaborative setting where diverse teams are pioneering different approaches or intervention points in order to achieve a set of common outcomes, rather than competing over startup funding for individual approaches. The accelerator consists of 4-5 months of intensive co-design, action research, prototyping & testing, potential client / commissioner workshops, data hackathons, business modelling, and preparation for investment. We imagine that the ideas accelerated in the programme will involve both hyper locally rooted childcare solutions as well as systems-based and scalable interventions
KEY OUTCOME OF PROTOTYPE To examine the requirements needed to facilitate and expand a truly systems led process which encompasses as many stakeholders as possible. To identify opportunities to have a system level impact on the childcare sector.
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4/ DemoDev - Data Led Housing Placing data at the core of urban innovation to examine how landowners can make the best use of their portfolio for their own benefit and the benefit of the community. The DemoDev project is currently been running in collaboration with Ordnance Survey, Land Registry and Birmingham City Council. After responding to a brief to create data led solutions which help combat the housing crisis. We are currently experimenting and exploring the best route for a physical prototype and platform which can engage local communities with housing issues and the decision making process. DemoDev will harness the power of Land Registry and Ordnance Survey data to unlock underused land and turn it into open designed, sustainable, adaptable homes. Homes which are in areas people want to live in, which can be self built and can grow and change as their owners lives evolve. A platform to dramatically lower the barriers of custom build housing. By approaching the housing crisis in a holistic manner there lies the opportunity to create a whole new system: from land identification and planning approval to home design and ultimate construction. Utilising existing statute and the power of Open Data, Open Design and self construction we can create an innovative solution to the housing crisis.
Outcomes Focused
Collective Intelligence
KEY OUTCOME OF PROTOTYPE
Systems Financing
Create a functioning platform and engagement tool highlight the opportunities where Birmingham City Council land could be better used for housing or community improvement. 32 \ PROTOTYPING THE 21ST CENTURY TOWN HALL
5/ Open Co. - Reimagining Legitimacy Re-imagining and Prototyping Institutional Year 2015-16 Plan Legitimacy for societal change in a 1. Research & evaluate the current stream of innovation focused reinventing trustworthiness and legitimacy - eg systems futures. - Open Corporates, Open data, Crowd Funding, Open IP, A scale free exploration of the existing and emerging global intelligence around openness and legitimacy. We see legitimacy and trustworthiness as being key components to the success of companies for the future. As citizens look to be more engaged and informed when making decisions on where to place their trust and capital, there will be a requirement for greater transparency. We are particularly interested in how 21st century institutions and ecosystems will be able to adapt to a new way of working and organising the means of production. This will require a deep research and evaluation stage, hypothesis testing, a large scale open and public conversation, participative hackathons. All underpinned with strong, dynamic feedback loops to increase collective intelligence.
The key themes we will look to explore are: Open Contracts, Open Payee, Open Finance, Open Governance, Open Human Resource, Open Making
Social Media, Open Politics - 3 months
2. Build & publish a hypothesis and provocation document to grow a community and Conversation in Birmingham and nationally - 3 months 3. Organise 5 hackathons; focused on rapid realtime hypothesis testing & experimentation; developing new tools, practices and behaviours for radical organisational transparency, civic legitimacy, crowd governance - 5 months
Collective Intelligence LEGITIMACY
Open Co.
Power of Us
KEY OUTCOME OF PROTOTYPE
Release a beta suite of protocols, value statements and possible tech solutions to help institutions collaborate and drive forward a more open, fair and democratic way of operating - 1 month IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 33 IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 33
6/ Mission Birmingham Residency Inspire, connect and propel innovative and disruptive citizens who have the passion to build a better Birmingham. The citizens residency will provide a launchpad for thought provoking creatives, problem solvers, doers, thinkers and creators to pursue their ideas and access the people, resources and space they need to get started or to grow. We believe a better Birmingham won’t simply be built by startups. It will require squashing the silos, radical collaborations and equal access to resources. Birmingham has amazing people in every corner, dreamers, doers and believers that know a better future is possible. At Impact Hub Birmingham we want to uncover and support the emerging talent so it can flourish. We know we can’t do this alone. The Hub residency aims to connect those who want to invest in positive change with those who have the passion and ideas to make it happen. Connecting innovators to the resources and network they need. Connecting investors to those who have the ideas and passions to build a better Birmingham. A platform for purpose, shifting Birmingham to a more open, equitable and democratic future. Funded by the crowd. For Birmingham, by Birmingham.
Outcomes MISSION
Convening 34 \ PROTOTYPING THE 21ST CENTURY TOWN HALL
Fellowship
Mission Birmingham Residency WHY?
Birmingham is facing some major and very distinctive economic challenges with high unemployment rates, high levels of deprivation and large public sector cuts. There are major challenges ahead - at Impact Hub Birmingham we want to provide a platform for changemakers to build a better Birmingham. Whether it be tackling our toughest challenges, inspiring others, testing an idea or bringing people together to grow skills. We believe by investing in people, providing equality of opportunity and providing access to resources and peers we will unleash a new generation of impact makers in the city.
WHO & WHAT?
• Risk takers, doers, dreamers with entrepreneurial spirit, those looking to develop their ideas for a better Birmingham. • Passionate residents with ideas that are feasible to test, build and/ or grow. • Ideas that are distinctive, innovative and amitious • Ideas, projects and people that want to have a lasting impact in Birmingham • Ideas and projects that inspire others to act, join or respond.
KEY OUTCOME OF PROTOTYPE
Develop, incubate and grow an open talent pool of social innovators, change makers, activists and entrepreneurs building a better Birmingham. IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 35
Dark Matters: Unleashing the #PowerofUs As we build a movement from the ground up, standing on the shoulders of giants before us, the opportunity ahead is huge. We believe more than ever the wicked problems and challenges we face as a civilisation can no longer be resolved in silos, we know that massive open collaboration across systems is going to be crucial. We also believe that in order to realise and unleash this future we must reinvent the industrial infrastructure which gave birth to many of our current challenges.
Innovation, Contracting, Leadership, Governance, Value creation & Talent Management, is unleashing the power of us. In collaboration with Project 00 and Dark Matter Laboratories we will building a research base for this work.
IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 36
Team IMANDEEP KAUR
ANDY REEVE
INDY JOHAR
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Immy is passionate and focused on exploring the tools, actors, relations and movements of change required to create just, more equal, fair and prosperous places. Immy is a Co - Founder at Impact Hub Birmingham, Director at Project 00 and Curator of TEDxBrum / City Camp Birmingham. Immy has led a team to grow the first Impact Hub outside of London in the UK, joining a global network of more than 80 hubs; spearheaded a team to successfully crowd fund the largest Kickstarter campaign in Birmingham, curated and produced numerous TEDx events. Immy is currently focused on strategic development of Impact Hub Birmingham as a town hall for the 21st Century and on behalf of 00 co founding Dark Matter Laboratories.
Andy has had a varied and diverse career path so far, developing skills in Project Management, Financial Systems and most recently as a Data Scientist. He is most passionate about projects which combine these skillsets to develop innovative new approaches for social benefit through data led processes. As a Geovation award winner he is also currently working with Ordnance Survey, Land Registry and Birmingham City Council to develop a data led approach to tackling the housing crisis.
Indy Johar is an architect, co-founder of 00 (project00. cc), Dark Matter Laboratories and a Senior Innovation Associate with the Young Foundation.
E: imandeep.kaur@impacthub.net T: +44792 006 5505 Li: uk.linkedin.com/in/immykaur/ T: @ImmyKaur
E: andy.reeve@impacthub.net T: +44774 911 4243 Li: uk.linkedin.com/in/andyreevo T: @AndyReevo
E: indy@project00.cc T: +447736 698 778 Li: uk.linkedin.com/pub/inderpaul-johar/10/b0/b44 T: @indy_johar
Indy, on behalf of 00, has co-founded multiple social ventures from Impact Hub Westminster to Impact Hub Birmingham and the HubLaunchpad.net - Open Venture Accelerator] and has also co-led research projects such as The Compendium for the Civic Economy, whilst supporting several 00 explorations/experiments including the wikihouse.cc, opendesk.cc. Indy is an Advisor to the Earth Security Initiative and a director of WikiHouse Foundation and Civic Systems Laboratory.
IMPACT HUB BIRMINGHAM / 37
Team INDERJIT KAUR
JOYJIT SARKAR
DANIEL ZASTAWNY
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Co-Founder
Indi has had many years of experience in Project Management and Consultancy, working for a multinational corporate for more than 17 years. Through setting up her own events management company, Indi’s passion and love for all things events, new creative concepts and bringing people together has grown. As a mother of 2 boys under the age of 2, Indi has consistently experienced the limited, inflexible, unaffordable and broken childcare system, and is growing a movement, designing programmes and reimagining childcare for the 21st Century from the ground up at Impact Hub Birmingham.
Joy is a builder. A builder of furniture, hope and movements. As a Medical Engineer, Joy is most interested in exploring how to provide a new style of healthcare which is smart, patient-centered and innovative.
Dan is a practical and purpose driven doer. His work is focused on finding, designing and implementing effective, innovative and financially self-sustaining ways for communities, and organisations, to overcome socio-economic challenges. Dan has worked across continents, sectors and missions to achieve this. Dan is a cofounder of Impact Hub Birmingham, Head of Research and Development at Bridging To The Future, a Trustee of Lench’s Trust and an associate entrepreneur with a diverse range of organisations. Dan focuses on keeping close ties to the communities, and needs, he works for and is inspired by the positive impact others around him have.
E: inderjit.kaur@impacthub.net T: +44787 064 9009 Li: uk.linkedin.com/in/indikaur T: @Inderjitkaur77
E: joyjit.sarkar@impacthub.net T: +44783 708 2988 Li: uk.linkedin.com/in/joyjitsarkar T: @joyfuljosu
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After many years working for the NHS, Joy founded a new consultancy providing engineering and design solutions for assistive technology for a host of global clients. He now hopes to help reimagine the manufacturing landscape across Birmingham.
E: daniel.zastawny@impacthub.net T: +44778 062 1649 Li: uk.linkedin.com/in/danzastawny T: @Dan_Zastawny