Centre for Social Innovation - Where Change Happens!

For longer than I have been an employ at the Centre for Social Innovation, CSI staff have talked the talk and walked the walk on the topic of Community Animation. And, they've done a great job at it.

With the recent release of CSI's Shared Spaces for Social Innovation publication series, all of CSI's lessons learned on community animation (and practically everything else!) are down on paper. One of the key points in the section on community animation is that "your role is occasionally to create, but generally to enable and facilitate."

When I first read this, I thought, "WHHHHAT? 'Occasionally create?' Barf! How unfulfilling!" But, I quickly realized that enabling and facilitating are their own types of innovative achievement and that I should focus on the positive meaning of this and all the other points listed on the topic of community animation.

When I joined the CSI staff team, I was hired to work on a Live Green Toronto community animation project in collaboration with the City of Toronto, Citizen's Environment Watch (now EcoSpark) and the Conservation Council of Ontario. At the time, I didn't actually know what community animation was (sorry Tonya!).

By experiencing community animation first hand and by reading its key components down on paper, I understand the concept better and can even use my original feelings of distaste to explain the successes of the Live Green Toronto project.

CSI's portion of the Live Green Toronto project was to deliver an information toolkit on energy saving activities that could be executed at the community level. Tonya wanted to create something more engaging than a paper toolkit and so came up with the idea of developing instructional content into 5 minute videos.

My role was to organize experts on relevant topics to develop content and develop this content into script outlines with her eye for important info and the help of A.R.C. Institute, a new media production company. At the end, Live Green Toronto had a series of videos with titles like, "How to Start a Neighbourhood Natural Food Buying Club" and "How to Work with your Landlord to Green Your Building."

Our motive was to show viewers that if everyone contributed a little bit, these energy saving projects would take off and achieve incredible collective results.

Looking at the videos together, I see that in every case one person needs to take the first step, whether that be having the idea, or organizing an initial meeting, but its never one person doing all the work. A second person, or a few people, get excited about the idea and do a manageable amount of work in order for the project to come together.

This all sounds good in theory. And, this is a lesson, I know, that many people learned in those ripe ol' early kindergarten days. But, just as we all forget to put away our toys on occasion, or wash our hands before dinner, sometimes we need to be reminded in order to turn these good theories into good practice. I did!

I needed to be reminded that acheiving projects collectively in my professional, personal, and civic life, is both practical and creative. I needed to understand that these very acts are part of community animation, and have kept families and communities together for a long time.

It's an old concept. It's easy to forget. Maybe you needed to be reminded too?

I've still got more work to do to formalize my answer to the question "What Is Community Animation." I'd love to know what you think.... Check back for a few more posts on the topic.

Check out the Introduction to Live Green Toronto video.

Check out the first video in the toolkit series: How to Start a Community Garden.