Snook Summit on Learning and Skills

Snook Summit LEARNING AND SKILLS FRIDAY 22ND JUNE

SYSTEMS ARE CHANGING (FINANCIAL, GOVERNMENTAL, PUBLIC SERVICE), NEW FORMS OF ORGANISATIONS ARE EMERGING, AND NEW APPROACHES ARE REQUIRED TO SUPPORT THESE. THERE IS AN INCREASED DEMAND ON THE PEOPLE OF SCOTLAND’S SKILLS, TALENTS AND KNOWLEDGE. THE GOAL OF THE SNOOK SUMMIT WAS TO EXPLORE THE GAP BETWEEN WHAT PEOPLE KNOW AND WHAT THEY ARE EXPECTED TO KNOW.

SNOOK

Report | Lauren Currie | October 2012

OPEN

• Snook •

WHEN & WHERE

WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT WHO’S BEHIND IT

We're opening our doors and inviting you to see behind the scenes at Snook. We try hard to be open about our learning journey through our website and we will be doing so more consistently and in a variety of other formats over the coming months.

However, we also wanted to open up our physical space for people to walk into and really experience how we are trying to keep doing what we do and staying committed to our vision.

This is all part of our exploration of how to be an open and networked learning organisation and the whole team will be here to join in.

We hope that the flow of people in and out of our space will bring new learning into our organisation, keep momentum to the conversation we had at the Snook Summit, and see some of our learning being picked up by others.

Join the discussion on Twitter #opensnook

Open Snook Evenings are supported by Architecture and Design Scotland.

15th of November 2012

5pm till 7pm

Snook The Top Floor 151 Bath Street GlasgowG2 4SQ

SNOO K

Snook Summit on Skills and Learning

2.65 million people in the UK are unemployed – the worst levels since 1994. There simply aren’t enough jobs and the low rate of job growth (minus 1.3% p.a.), without drastic changes in economic development, unemployment in the UK will stay at unacceptable heights for the years to come. In addition to this the trade and industry of the UK is changing too, reflecting a different economy and levels of resource, as well as new technologies. These emerging trades and 21st century constraints require new capabilities and skills and an infrastructure is starting to emerge that can help develop them. However, much of this infrastructure is still new and relatively unknown outside of the “innovation silos”; or it is emerging from inside the walls of academic institutions, only accessible to those who can pay, study or commercialise their outputs.

In addition, organisations of all types, shapes and sizes are struggling with a new reality: social inequality, a love/hate relationship with technology, dwindling resources, climate change, the collapse of

financial institutions. Some are so involved in daily operations – and keeping their heads above water – they are blind to the future. Others recognise the challenges around them, but lack vision. Often they are over-extended and under capitalised, with talented staff trying to do more things than they can possibly do well.

And whilst new infrastructure is emerging to support new practices a new knowledge is being created outside of these institutions and organisations. As Indy Johar states, “practice is increasingly leading theory” which creates its own challenges - the dissemination and sharing of learning is both increasingly complex and critically needed.

It is increasingly complex because it requires the development of new sensibilities, new capabilities and new skills to happen almost simultaneously and it’s critical due to the scale of the challenges we have to overcome as a civilisation.

In relation to this Indy Johar emphasises “most critically new practices are being developed but they are not evenly spread. This requires 21st century practice to invest in being open - an extension of the open data, open governance model, moving toward open and legible practice - with a practical investment in sharing learning, IP and tacit know how.”

Why we all need to think about skills and capabilities

Why? The Event The wider context

Why Snook curated this?

Key lines of enquiry

Snook want to help pioneer a consortium of people to deliver a cohesive learning platform in Scotland that will connect the cultural and social spaces.

Bringing together public, private and third sector representatives in MAKLab with special guest Indy Johar.

How can we map out and understand what the skills and capabilities we need to develop are?

Exploring Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains.

Snook’s work in public sector, education, communities and government is highlighting the need for this thinking.

What is the appetite?

What is a new taxonomy?

What is the demand?

What is the learning ecology?

An Overview

Bloom’s Taxonomy

1.

Launch a community learning innovation fund.

Launch a campaign to recognise the value of smart, fast, flexible people on a mission.

Overview of Recommendations

Create a register of learning and network advisors.

Everyone will publish what they learn.

Launch a tailored programme to assist development of practice and knowledge in learning and networks.

Use open models: open innovation, open organisations, open source, open learning.

A pilot to take new information to new places.

Create a data and visualisation panel.

Mentoring and peer learning is a critical piece in the learning and networks ecosystem.

Scotland will trailblaze the potential of a Global commons.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10.


The Event

In a world so full of knowledge and an abundance of learning possibilities, isn’t it our responsibility to work as hard as we can to see that every Scottish citizen has a chance to unlock his or her potential? Snook has been confronted with some of these challenges in our own practice. Overleaf we share the practical examples of why we wanted to curate this event, the demand we felt from some of our clients and various experiences.

However, it’s something that we ourselves want to learn to do better. Many of us trying to affect change are doing so with little time to reflect and share learning, or when we do so, that learning is often only disseminated into the pockets of our familiar networks.

Part of this Summit was for Snook to better understand what it means to be an open learning organisation or platform. Partly this is so when we do something, we can try to do it in such a way that it is directly replicable for someone else to pick up and use. But also so that we can facilitate others in adopting our methods and

practices more easily. We feel this is more than just open innovation, it’s an open culture that can spread through networks.

Snook believe in the following shifts outlined by Connie Yowell the Director of Education grant making at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation:

1) A SHIFT FROM EDUCATION TO LEARNING. Education is what institutions do, learning is what people do.

2) A SHIFT FROM CONSUMPTION OF INFORMATION TO PARTICIPATORY LEARNING. Learning happens best when it is rich in social connections, especially when it is peer-based and organized around learners’ interests, enabling them to create as well as consume information.

3) A SHIFT FROM INSTITUTIONS TO NETWORKS. In the digital age, the fundamental operating and delivery systems are networks, not institutions which are one node of many people’s network of learning opportunities. People learn across institutions, so an entire learning network must be supported.

In the 1950’s Benjamin Bloom developed his taxonomy of cognitive objectives, Bloom’s Taxonomy. This categorized and ordered thinking, skills and objectives. His taxonomy follows the thinking process: you cannot understand a concept if you do not first remember it, similarly you can not apply knowledge and concepts if you do not understand them. It is a continuum from Lower Order Thinking Skills (LOTS) to Higher Order Thinking Skills (HOTS).

Snook are curious to ask questions around how this thinking would apply to citizen based learning and the acquiring of new skills associated with ‘disciplines’ such as social innovation and networked business modelling.

What skills do we need to “Google”? Search engines are now key elements of how everyone researches. Should we be learning to ‘tweet’? The Twitter site’s fundamental question is “what are you doing?” This can be, in its most simplistic form, a one or two word answer, but when developed, this is a tool that lends itself to developing understanding and potentially starting collaboration. Do we all know how to film, animate, videocast and podcast? To enable us to create, mix and remix content to share existing knowledge and create new networks?

Wider Context


Bloom’s Taxonomy


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Benjamin Bloom created this taxonomy for categorizing the level of abstraction of questions that commonly occur in educational settings. The taxonomy provides a useful structure in which to categorize thinking.

How does this taxonomy translate into connected learning that is social and participatory ? What does Bloom’s Taxonomy looks like for the information age?

Key words:

Active, relevant, real world, effective, hands - on, networked, innovative, personal, transformative

EDUCATION Educators, students and graduates often ask Snook “How do you do what you do?” From graduates of Hyper Island in Stockholm to Taiwan University of Engineering, the students Snook meet are craving relevant skills and resources that they seem unable to find in the system or institutions they are learning in.

Insights gathered from teaching at:

Taiwan University of Engineering|Hyper Island, Sweden|University of Kuopio, Finland|Glyndwr University, Wales|University of Strathclyde, Scotland|Glasgow School of Art| Napier University / Auburn University USA|The University of Dundee

PUBLIC SECTORPublic sector workers, at all levels, ask Snook “Where can we learn to do what you do?” There are vast amounts of research and reports that tell the public sector what is wrong and what they need to do better but very little that focuses on HOW to do that.

Insights gathered from working with:

Scottish Government|NHS |Councils | Skills Development Scotland | National Police Forces

COMMUNITIESCommunities ask Snook “How do I make my idea a reality?” There is lots of funding available (Big Society Bank etc.) - but communities don’t know how to work together to establish a common vision, or a framework for taking ideas forward.

Insights gathered from working with local people from:

Maryhill|Inverlyde|Muirhouse|Whitfield |Douglas|Kilmarnock

SPECIAL GUEST: INDY JOHARAnother important dimension to this is what Indy Johar spoke of in his keynote speech - that not only is practice happening in silos, but that practice is now often leading knowledge and therefore often the only way to learn these approaches and develop such capabilities is to be out in the field, outside of institutions. Those people that are working in this way also have a challenge in how they ever stop for a moment to even reflect and share practice and build this new knowledge.

Why Snook curated this



Key lines of enquiry

What is the appetite?

Snook know of individuals and organisations who are thinking and asking questions in this space - who else is active in this space and what are their priorities and motivations?

How can we map out and understand what the skills and capabilities we need to develop are?

Snook knows that other people are also experiencing this - what can other people in the room share with us about where they are seeing, hearing or experiencing the demand for new learning?

Snook know that there are also many institutions, organisations, networks and individuals out there who are doing great work in this area - if we map out this learning ecology, who should be there?

What is a new taxonomy?

What is the demand?

What is the learning ecology?

“Economies have gone through a transformation from their traditional industrial base to the knowledge era, in which learning and innovation are central. yet, many of today’s public, private and third sector organisations and communities have not caught up: they continue to operate as they did in the earlier decades of the 20th century. How can learning within and outside organisations be reconfigured in environments that foster the deeper knowledge and skills so crucial in the 21st century? To succeed in this is important not only for a successful economy, but also for effective cultural and social participation and for citizens to lead fulfilling lives.”

1. How do we become able to say “I don’t know”? 2. How can we practise being experimental?3. How can we understand the relevance of the possibilities and opportunities of technology? 4. What does it mean to be an active listener and how do we practise that? 5. How can we become more diplomatic (able to work with both the old and new systems)? 6. How can we make sense of and visualise complex information? 7. How can we practice engaging with the new? 8. How can we learn to work with ambiguity? 9. How can we find and build the best relationships? 10. Who else can we learn from about this?


What Snook think every citizen should learn


Voices

Mark Anderson

Richard Clifford

John Flitcroft

Fiona Godsman

Paula Grubb

Rohan Gunatillake

Fiona Harper

Gordon Hush

Asif Ishaq

Jackie Killean

Mark Langdon

Diarmaid Lawlor

Leah Lockhart

Mike McLean

Karen McGregor

Glasgow Caledonian University

Glasgow School of Art

Scottish Institute of Enterprise

Duncan of Jordanstone

Producer

Duncan of Jordanstone

Glasgow School of Art

The Scottish Government

The Big Lottery

Glasgow Life

Architecture and Design Scotland

The Improvement Service

The Improvement Service

First Port

MakLab

Head of European Programmes

Founder

Graduate

CEO

Student

Producer

Graduate

Programme Leader in Design and Innovation

Policy Advisor

CEO

Cultural Services Offer at Glasgow Life

CEO

Online Knowledge Officer

Head of Knowledge Management

CEO

Geoff Huggins The Scottish Government Head of Mental Health at Scottish Government

NAME ORGANISATION ROLE

Stephanie Fulke

Lisa Johnstone

University of Dundee

NHS 24

Masters Graduate


Voices

Gillian Miller

Dr. Emma Murphy

Dr. Sue Northrop

The Big Lottery

Imagination Lancaster


Senior Policy and Learning Manager

Lecturer in Design Management

Research Analyst

Kate Pickering

Fiona Pilgrim

Kyle Usher

Dr. Bruce Scharlau

Vanilla Ink

Cultural Enterprise Office

Young Scot

CEO

Aberdeen University

Professional Development Manager

Digital Development Coordinator

Senior Teaching Fellow

Amanda Tyndall

Matt Stitt

Ruth Watson

Linda Murray

Denise O’Connor

Wendy Wilkinson

Andy Pendry

Jackie McNally

NESTA

Scottish Enterprise

Business Gateway


Education Scotland

Creative Scotland

Science Fest Deputy Festival Director

Product & Service Designer

Intern

Organisational Development Manager

Growth Start Up Advisor

Deputy Director of Culture

Chief Technology Adviser

Development Officer

NAME ORGANISATION ROLE


What the guests at the summit believe every citizen needs to learn

Mindset and attitudeKeeping an open mind is essential to having a curious mind. Be open to learn, unlearn, and relearn. Some things we know and believe might be wrong, and we should be prepared to accept this possibility and change our mind.

It’s time to realise the scale of the economic and social crisis we face, and change course. We all need to be confident to think wide, deep and look far, and be unashamedly and ludicrously ambitious for our future. We need to be bold.

None of us can see the future with certainty. We approach each day, as we all do, knowing we will be presented with new information and unexpected changes in our lives, business or the general economy. If everything is constantly changing, what is the most rational mindset to have in the face of this environment? Get comfortable with ambiguity.

Pushing our bodies to work past their natural rhythm diminishes our ability to renew and recharge. We are all working harder and longer than ever before and need to learn how to make time for ourselves.

CommunicationHow does telling our stories benefit us? We need to know and express our own stories because storytelling is still a valid and important part of society. Encouraging storytelling in your family, organisation or community increases imagination.

We need to recognise that listening has to be learned. We are all taught how to speak and as adults how to speak in public, but we don’t teach listening. Sound expert Julian Treasure says “In our louder and louder world we are losing our listening”. We must re-tune our ears for conscious listening - to other people and the world around us.

How can we learn how to have crucial conversations? It’s a dying art, struck down by text, email and messaging. So can we be taught how to talk to each other?

Every day an article comes out, or a discussion is sparked about the change we need in our communities, cities, government, people, politicians, organisations, businesses and schools. How can we learn to talk about change in a way that will move beyond the ‘why’ to the ‘how’.

HOW CAN WE RE-DESIGN COMMUNITIES, ORGANISATIONS, CENTRAL GOVERNMENTS AND LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO BECOME HIGHLY EFFECTIVE LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS?


Playfulness Digital applications are becoming an inescapable framework for the choices we make every single day, knowing how to code is already starting to mean the difference between using software, and being used by it.

How can we learn from those who are learning it? How can they share the ways they are shaping our future with those of us that don’t know or understand? This will deliver an important advantage for all of us in dealing with the networks and machines that dominate every facet of our reality.

Human beings have a gift for fantasy, which shows itself at a very early age and then continues to make all sorts of contributions to our intellectual and emotional life throughout the life span. Imagination allows us to open our mind and heart to new possibilities for our future and ourselves. Are you being taught to be imaginative?

Play is a natural form of problem-solving that gives us the chance to make sense of the world and our roles in it by letting us try out new identities, strategies, and possibilities for how to move ahead. It gives us access to ideas that never before existed, allows us to experience the world in a safe way, and helps us envision the road ahead with less fear and more faith. It is these aspects of play that make it a critical step on our journey to what’s next. How do you play?

What is the power behind a shared experience? Uploading and sharing is a key skill - uploading materials to websites and the sharing of materials via sites like flickr etc. This is a simple form of collaboration, a higher order thinking skill.

How are you learning new ways to share your experiences?

How can we ensure some of these shared experiences happen offline and in person? The Olympics have showcased the value of human achievement and the importance of celebrating success and sharing learnings and failings. How does this translate into traditional systems?

Cultural and organisational changeAre you an early adopter? There are websites out there that can tell you just how early you signed up for Instagram, Foursquare, Twitter and Gmail but what is the equivalent of this in the public sector? And what does it mean to be an early adopter around paradigm shifts rather than technology progress? Where do you learn how to spot early adopters in local communities?

What are you doing differently? What are the tools and approaches you are using to navigate through this?

Diversity is crucial to gaining the perspectives and ideas that foster innovation but where do we learn how to find people who are have very different world views from our own? How do leaders of organisations learn to work with people who are very different from themselves?

In production and development, open source is a philosophy, or pragmatic methodology that promotes free redistribution and access to an outcomes design and implementation details. How are we learning to design and create open business models? And organisations that practice open innovation?

What the guests at the summit believe every citizen needs to learn

“UP UNTIL NOW THERE HAS BEEN NO OVERT DISCUSSION ABOUT THIS AND IT IS INEVITABLE. SO WHAT ARE THESE SKILLS AND HOW DO WE GET THEM?” - Snook summit participant


Mindset and attitude

// Buddify: mobile meditation apphttp://buddhify.com/

// The Society for Exploratory Research http://www.societyforexploratoryresearch.com

// Nowhere Island: symbolising a nation of global citizens, with citizenship open to allhttp://nowhereisland.org/

Communication//Talkaoke is a pop-up talk-show. http://www.talkaoke.com

// BBC Radio 4’s Listening Programhttp://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/features/the-listening-project

// We Feel Fine is an exploration of human emotion and story telling on a global scalehttp://www.wefeelfine.org

Playfulness

// Life Long Kindergarden http://llk.media.mit.edu

// How to be an explorer of the world http://www.kerismith.com

// Adult Playgroundshttp://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/01/nyregion/new-york-introduces-its-first-adult-playground.html?pagewanted=all

Cultural and organisational change//100% openhttp://www.100open.com/

// Embedding Design http://embeddingdesign.com/

// Open IDEOhttp://openideo.com

Inspiration and Links


Recommendations and conclusions

Recommendation 1Scotland would benefit from launching an equivalent fund.

The kind of outcomes this fund is investing in will allow new learning and knowledge to emerge, and through new routes, with an emphasis on learning outside of formal institutions.

This shift is not the responsibility of any one individual, sector or organisation. It requires collaboration on large scale for a long period of time.

The internet has become a way of life for most of us, yet nine million British adults have never been online - and nearly half of them are among our most disadvantaged people. Martha Lane Fox , the Government’s UK Digital Champion and founder of lastminute.com is changing that. Her Race Online 2012 campaign – backed by organisations from the Post Office to the Women’s Institute – has signed 100,000 volunteers in a bid to get everyone online by the time of the London Olympics.

This campaign has been a catalyst for a vast range of sectors and businesses to collaborate and unite around a goal - to inspire, encourage and support more people online.

Recommendation 2A register of learning and network advisors.

To facilitate a move to a Scotland that is working across boundaries and building

robust networks around new skills and talents, Government should establish a register of trailblazers in this space to advise on system, service and product development.

This list would be made up of practice-leaders and thinkers such as:

*Indy Johar the cofounder of 00:/ a qualified architect and regeneration consultant with particular experience in socially driven sustainability.

* Roland Harwood the cofounder of 100%Open - an organisation that specialises in Open Innovation.

* Cassie Robinson who specialises in strategic design, open innovation and networks.

* Rohan Guntilake the producer of festivalslab & Sync, Creator of buddhify & cofounder of Meditation by Design.

* Tessy Britton the cofounder of Social Spaces; transforming society at community levels.

* Dominic Campbell the founder of Future Gove; transforming local government through design and technology.

Learning to learn has to become inherent in our fabric of Scotland and the networks and homes that make up our country.

SCOTLAND LAUNCH COMMUNITY LEARNING INNOVATION FUND

“The Community Learning Innovation Fund (CLIF) is a new £4million grants fund from the Skills Funding Agency, managed by NIACE - The fund will provide grants between £10,000 and £65,000 to groups and organisations from across England for new and imaginative community learning opportunities to encourage adults to take up, succeed and progress in learning. It will support projects - which will run from September 2012 to July 2013 - to develop and offer creative learning opportunities that support the objectives set out in the recent policy reform document from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), New Challenges, New Chances.”



Many NHS hospitals are teaching hospitals - each year hospitals have a new intake of junior doctors and nurses. It’s driven by a constant updating of knowledge and skills, and it’s important that staff are up to date with all that. When you begin your career in the NHS you shadow senior staff members and are offered a mentor or a coach. What if governments focused on being learning governments?

Education Institutions are one example of organisations that are focused on understanding how and why learners learn. They inject time, energy and resources into understanding how pupils prefer to learn, their learning strengths, and how pupils can motivate themselves and have the self-confidence to succeed. Schools design specific strategies to help pupils improve their memory or make sense of complex information. What if every organisation across the public, private and third sector invested in understanding how and why their staff learn?

Recommendation 3A tailored programme

In partnership with organisations like NESTA, The Big Lottery and Creative Scotland (all of whom invest in innovation), The Scottish Government should design and help embed a programme for staff across any public or civic organisation that includes the development of practice and knowledge in learning and networks.

The course ought to place emphasis on the participants being champions for learning and creating networks in their sectors afterwards.

We must open up the questions raised in this document to curious and engaged citizens and take them to new, unexpected contexts.

Social Spaces aims to transform society at community level by bringing knowledge and questions to local communities all over the UK. Social Spaces surfaces new emergent knowledge from successful community practice around the world; using a trans-disciplinary approach to analyse and extract learning; and develop innovative ways to spread these new ideas and methods.

The Travelling Pantry was an adventurous project conducted from September 2010 - March 2011. Tessy Britton visited 40 communities across the country delivering free experimental stimulation workshops to any groups that asked for one. Over 1,000 people took part in the workshops overall, and an estimated 20,000 miles was travelled.

The workshops spread ideas collected through the collaborative Hand Made Book, plus newly designed methods and tools, aimed at stimulating the co-design and co-production of new types of community projects - using wider strategies and human and material assets already existing in communities. What would the equivalent of The Travelling Pantry for the public sector look like?

The workshops spread ideas collected through the collaborative Hand Made Book, plus newly designed methods and tools, aimed at stimulating the co-design and co-production of new types of community projects - using wider



strategies and both human and material assets already existing in communities.

Recommendation 4A pilot

Together with an institution like Glasgow School of Art, organisations and businesses could collaborate with students to design ways to take information to new people and new places. This could focus on ways to link up and extend new knowledge and practice and make a visible trail of how new learning is emerging, as well as raise public awareness and increase public engagement in these new approaches.

We must all commit to finding mentors and engaging with peers that can help us develop our thinking around this.

Pollenizer ( http://pollenizer.com ) is an innovation scout “matching great people + ideas + our lean startup science” their whole focus is making connections and building networks and relationships. There are many tech hubs like this all over the world and the common thread amongst them is that their community encourages mentorship. These communities work best when they bring a diverse range of skills, talents and disciplines together.

Policy makers should be mentored by entrepreneurs, and civil servants should be mentored by carers. And vice versa. Why not?

Lauren Currie, co-founder of Snook, has been invited to mentor the Director of Learning and Justice at the Scottish Government. Reverse

mentoring is a symbol of how experience and guidance of emerging practices like social innovation will influence decision makers.

Recommendation 5Mentoring and peer learning becomes known as a critical piece in the learning and networks ecosystem across the country.

For mentoring, firstly, consider a mentor younger than yourself and then look outside of your office and everyday practice or expertise, as well as your comfort zone. Secondly, be a mentor yourself. Seek out talent or inexperience, show curiosity in things you don’t quite understand and make yourself available as a mentor or guide to support someone on their own path of discovery and development.

For peer learning, identify a peer who will commit, with you, to make space over a period of time to share learning and to offer critical eyes, fresh perspective and the opportunity for knowledge building.

It’s not about finding the information anymore it’s about how we can use the capacity of our networks and social connection to learn new things.

Seth Godin’s book “Tribes” argues that now, for the first time, everyone has an opportunity to start a movement - to bring together a tribe of like-minded people and do amazing things. There are tribes everywhere, all of them hungry for connection, meaning and change. And yet, too many people ignore the opportunity to


for connection, meaning and change. And yet, too many people ignore the opportunity to lead, because they are “sheepwalking” their way through their lives and work, too afraid to question whether their compliance is doing them (or their company) any good. This book is for those who don’t want to be sheep and instead have a desire to do fresh and exciting work. If you have a passion for what you want to do and the drive to make it happen, there is a tribe of fellow employees, or customers, or investors, or readers, just waiting for you to connect them with each other and lead them where they want to go.

Seth Godin argues that the Internet has ended mass marketing and revived a human social unit from the distant past: tribes. Founded on shared ideas and values, tribes give ordinary people the power to lead and make big change. He urges us to do so. “The organisations of the future are filled with smart, fast, flexible people on a mission”

Recommendation 6Campaign to recognise the value of smart, fast, flexible people on a mission.

Seminars, exhibitions, publications, digital solutions and award schemes - The Scottish Government should consider a scheme through which all sectors can nominate and acknowledge people who are forming networks, nurturing social connections and learning, thus creating a culture of knowledge sharing, pass it-on training and best practice, the results of which could be shown online. The

development of this online resource would act to inspire people to demand more time, energy and resources for networks and learning.

Those with knowledge and learning need to redistribute their learning and new knowledge. We are responsible for making our practices more visible. Those of us working to affect systemic change need to see that being open with our learning and helping others make sense of their learning is as crucial as trying to raise financial investment, or build a new model for public service delivery. It’s a part of the change infrastructure.

Technology is redefining how we communicate and educate by using new types of messages and experience to be more effective. The emerging literacy we must all master requires diving into a sea of information, immersing ourselves in data to harvest patterns of knowledge.

Scotland’s top civil servant Sir Peter Housden’s writes a weekly blog for his staff. It is intended to engage and stimulate staff, and therefore it mixes the serious with the not-so-serious in order to show a human face. The majority of the content is focused on the hard work and commitment the permanent secretary encounters in the Scottish Government and the wider public sector, with a few personal musings thrown in for good measure.

Sir Peter writes the updates in his own time and in his weekly column, the permanent secretary seeks to give staff a window into what he is thinking and doing at the top of the organisation.


Recommendation 7Publish what you learn.

What you publish doesn’t necessarily have to be complex. It could be a Wiki-style website, a Tumblr feed, a wordpress blog or even a bunch of quick messages on a simple Twitter account.

Tessy Britton has launched a mapping tool called MAP-it. Working in collaboration with Social Spaces Belgium - a research group based at the Media Arts Design Faculty in Genk –she has developed a prototype methodology to collaboratively gather learning and insights from a group of people who have already developed a project. Essentially mashing together Social Spaces Genk’s participatory mapping - Map-it - technology, Theory of Change principles, open source icons from the amazing The Noun Project, plus collaborative participatory methodologies, we intend to help develop a new way of collective learning.

Social connection must be priority. Learning is meaningful when it is part of valued social relationships and shared practice, culture, and identity.

We live in networked times and the tensions that this has created on our antiquated structures are revealing them to be increasingly irrelevant. We need to develop a networked, cooperative mindset. Open IDEO is an open innovation platform - a global community to solve big challenges for social good. 5,492 inspirations, 2950 concepts and 36545 users. IDEO have created a culture, identity and practice http://www.openideo.com/

Alongside technology platforms that support new infrastructures we need to create spaces that enable connectivity and sociability.

Recommendation 8Use open models: open innovation, open organisations, open source, open learning.

The MAKLab team are working to encourage access to digital fabrication technology at affordable rates for everyone. They work with everyone from professional designers, makers, crafters, hackers, and those dabbling for the first time. Places like this are opening up new levels of connectivity across communities and whole countries.

Networks of work spaces where entrepreneurial change-makers can connect and collaborate are also blossoming across the world. Hub Westminster in London. The huge empty space was transformed into what the team calls a super-studio for the new economy. There are assorted desks and tables, a communal kitchen, library, comfy area, cafe lounge, meeting rooms – including an internal greenhouse and a wooden WikiHouse (an open-source-design structure that can be built with minimal skill and training) – and a lecture room which seats over 100. It has hosted the launch of Richard Branson’s autobiography, the New Economics Foundation’s Local Banking Conference and numerous other events



including The Changemakers Fayre.

Embrace your organisation’s shift to a complex, adaptive world.

1. We need to re-imagine how we do HR. No more treating humans as a resource to be managed.

2. We need to re-imagine how we do professional development. No dull, lifeless training seminars that few pay attention to and in which fewer actually learn something useful.

3. We need to re-imagine how we do workplace relationships. No more power games. No more silos.

4. We need to re-imagine how we do customer service. No bland corporate speak. No making excuses for poor service.

From John Wegner ( https://twitter.com/JohnQShift )

The importance of reading, writing and critical thinking are as important as ever. But so are new literacies like understanding data and visualising complex information, they are an example of new curriculums that will be critical in the increasingly interconnected world we dwell in.

Infographics and data visualizations are revitalising the way we look at complex problems and ideas and have become an increasingly popular way to represent technical data and concepts. A raft of organisations from The Harvard Business Review, The Economist and NASA are launching contests and open calls to experiment with data visualisations. The idea is that people outside of the organisations that hold the data may have more creative ideas about how the information can best be presented. So these groups are tapping the ingenuity of the web’s masses, and in some cases offering a reward at the end.

Culture Hack Scotland is an example of a fast-paced and highly creative event that challenges everyone who attends to make innovative new culture-related projects in just 24 hours. Attendees are typically designers, web developers, arts professionals and artists, and data sourced from several arts organisations from across Scotland are used as the basis and inspiration of what gets made.

Recommendation 9A data and visualisation panel

The Scottish Government appoint a group formed to promote new ways of using data and by supporting those who are exploring this practice. The panel would promote data mining and visualisation across all sectors, explain the value that this can bring, when and how it should be used, and show case best practice examples.



Open networks must be researched and invested in. Today’s online platforms and digital tools can make learning resources abundant, accessible, and visible across all learner settings.

The Internet has enabled us to technically connect and collaborate. But just as network software engineers were required to open communications between online users, we now need lawyers to sort out the copyright and content regulations between us so that we - businesses and individuals - can share, collaborate and build legally.

Yet, users of Creative Commons licenses such as The White House, MIT, Wikipedia, Flickr, Al-Jazeera and many others, have generated over 250 million works published under Creative Commons licenses and do not need to hire a lawyer each time they want to share because each of these works uses a standard license. People building on these works also do not need to ask permission each time they want to share and collaborate, because the necessary permissions have already been granted. Creative Commons is a nonprofit organisation that enables the sharing and use of creativity and knowledge through free legal tools.

Recommendation 10Scotland trail blaze the potential of a Cultural Global Commons

Scotland should host debates with people using Creative Commons to add value to their sector to open the conversation about what a global commons for all discipline, not just creativity, would look like.

Cultural commons can generally be interpreted as the ‘cultures expressed and shared by a community’. This would lead to Scotland sensing a cultural confidence and a linkage between the local and the global - the social value is the shared beliefs which bind groups together.



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Snook Summit on Learning and Skills

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