An Octopus Walks into a Bar... and other stories from the Atlantic Canada ECE Lab

Join us for our monthly design call with speaker Molly Balcom Raleigh

Monday, December 16 2024
11am to 12pm Pacific Time
Event will be recorded and shared with the guest list

Molly will share reflections on design as an approach to sparking systems change through the Atlantic Canada ECE Lab (2020-2023). Through stories and visuals, Molly will share how our team of design researchers and systems facilitators combined rigorous design research with the relational and action-oriented structure of a Social Innovation Lab. Through this approach we engaged interest holders from across the sector to co-design and field-test social innovation prototypes that tackled systemic challenges to educator recruitment and retention in Canada’s Early Childhood Education sector.

The stories touch on tactical and theoretical aspects of design for/through the lab, including:

• How octopuses wielding brooms and other metaphors gave the sector a new shared language
• How we structured the co-design of the lab to reduce barriers to participation for those with lived experience of the challenges
• How we embedded design capability throughout the lab to activate the area expertise of the participants
• How the impacts of these combined approaches have extended beyond the lab’s temporary intervention