Conducting social invention workshops

Providing practical training in the invention of new social forms, their diffusion and marketing.

The Institute for Social Inventions has run over 4,000 social invention workshops in schools (mainly in the London area), giving pupils an opportunity to use their creativity in order to carry out projects of benefit to their local communities and teaching them problem-solving skills. Pupils are encouraged to look at problems in their home lives, their neighbourhoods and within their schools, and to pick one problem to tackle for the school term. They are then taught brainstorming as a method and are encouraged to come up the the wildest, zaniest scheme they can think of that will be of assistance. It should be one that it at least imaginative enough to be featured in the local media, as this gives the pupils an extra thrill and an extra motivation to persevere. At which point the pupils draw up a more sober action plan, one that includes their own list of questions for evaluating at the end of term their degree of success or failure. The rest of the term is spent carrying out the project, with a performance or exhibition as appropriate in the final school assembly, where individual "Certificates of Creativity" are awarded. Similar social invention workshops and future workshops are also run with adults.