Institute of Policy Studies

Roving Community Innovation Lab

WHAT IS IT?

The Roving Lab hopes to encourage people who may not ordinarily think of themselves as 'social innovators' or people mobilisers to start such local initiatives. By curating ideas and then sharing them on posters exhibited in a community space, we hope to reduce the barriers to getting involved. Our theory is that people do not participate in the life of their local community because they do not consider themselves to be the 'sociable' type and find most current community gatherings awkward or boring. If asked to join the grassroots, or to 'volunteer' for some social cause, many might not step forward. However, if people become aware of an interesting and doable idea--a meaningful way to get involved and contribute--they may be more likely to come forward not just to participate, but even to organise. What if we simply offered parents the opportunity to let their kids participate in peer-to-peer learning circles, or play host in a neighbourhood orientation tour, or to join a group to share energy savings or sustainability tips?

See beta website: https://www.rovinglabs-sg.com/

  • To promote mutual aid and build supportive communities, the Roving Community Innovation Lab will set up a pop-up exhibition at different neighbourhoods featuring ideas for peer-driven projects or ground up initiatives. Residents can browse these ready-to-run ideas and indicate interest to participate in or organise such activities. Some examples: Peer Learning Groups, Giving Circles, Timebanks.
  • Those interested will be equipped with playbooks that acts as a 'Do-It-Yourself manual' so that residents can self-organise these initiatives. There will be a half-day workshop where a facilitator helps run through the mechanics of each concept.
  • The half day workshop also includes an ideation session where residents can propose solutions to address local issues. Good ideas will then be added to the list of curated solutions that can be shared with other communities as the Lab moves from place to place.
  • A digital platform can be developed so that people living in a particular locality can discuss local issues, deliberate with one another, contribute ideas to address the problems, perhaps even upvote the ideas they want to act on. The platform may also allow residents to find others to form informal interest groups (e.g. litter pick up group, toy swop group etc). This allows a continued platform that supports residents coming together even as the Lab roves on to a different neighbourhood.
  • This can be complemented by an optional co-budgeting function where residents can pool resources and make collective decisions on how to spend the money to meet local needs.  It can also be Participatory Grantmaking/Budgeting process where small sums of money are made available to each locality for residents to suggest, deliberate and decide on local programmes. This can be supported by a budget that grassroots organisations make available, or partially by grantmakers who support ground-ups (e.g. Temasek OSCAR fund). 

Some possible peer-driven mutual aid projects are:

  1. Learning Circles
  2. Direct Giving/Support Circles
  3. Community Asset Mapping
  4. Neighborhood Tours (to generate inclusion)
  5. Timebanks/Offers and Requests Matching

See Annex A for more details.

WHY DO IT? 

  • The initiative moves to different neighbourhoods to activate residents to self-organise mutual aid projects or kickstart ground up initiatives that meet local needs.
  • As the Lab moves from place to place, it will also collect the best actionable ideas and bring it to the next locality, thereby increasing its repertoire of solutions that communities can consider taking on.
  • The Roving Lab allows us to intentionally test the ‘viral structure of social change’—getting communities to self-organise and then influencing others in their networks to do the same.

UPDATES

  • NUS Communications and New Media students have designed the landing page and playbooks as part of their module on ‘Communications and Social Change’.
  • In the planned pilot of Giving Circles, we intend to determine the feasibility of catalyzing the formation of circles without the central administration of NVPC and to compare the difference in efficacy. 
  • There are plans to try out the Roving Lab in 2 sites in February-March.

OPPORTUNITY FOR PARTNERSHIPS

  • Looking for local host organisations—such as a community centre, grassroots organization or social service agency—who can lend us space to use for a pop-up exhibitions and a meeting room for ideation sessions.
  • Funding for a pilot project after the initial ‘learning by doing’ phase is over.

Annex A – Pop-Up Exhibitions and Ideation Sessions

We will start with a low-tech approach, using billboards & playbooks.

We can have billboards that describe actionable ideas and solutions, so that community members can browse these ideas and select the ones they think they would like to participate in. These are some examples of solutions:

  • Peer-to-peer learning groups for youths (instead of tuition)
  • Community fund for interest-free loans
  • Giving circles
  • Timebanks / offers and requests exchange
  • Community Support Circles
  • Form neighborhood groups to reduce home energy usage (from Transition Towns)

One of the billboards will state simply “None of these ideas interest you? Want to come up with your own ideas for your community? Come join a short design-thinking process with your neighbours.” If enough people sign up, we can do a light version of design process focused specifically on community-driven solutions.

A playbook will be provided to residents who are interested in starting and participate in such initiatives. A facilitator can guide the initial set-up and organsing of the group, but there should be a clear ‘exit to community’ strategy.

Criteria for type of curated solutions

  • The projects could focus on ‘Solutions that Help Us Help One Another’ (to borrow from IPS conference theme last year) and focus on ideas that can encourage self-help, mutual aid, community building or contributing to the commons. This focal area sits better with ground ups instead of non-profit organisations in the business of service delivery and concerned to deliver programmes they can own, attract recurrent funding, and scale.
  • All projects could have a detailed operations manual or Do-It-Yourself Kit so that other groups can easily take on and implement the idea without having to ask for permission. It is much harder for non-profit organisations and formal service providers to do this because they have requirements for financial sustainability and so they are more likely to create proprietary knowledge and protect their intellectual property against competitors. Therefore, this seems to be the right space to encourage ‘commoning’.
  • Projects could be encouraged to provide an ‘Exit to Community’ Strategy where after 2-3 years, instead of centrally running the programme, a local partner will be able to take it on and do it themselves (e.g. RC, SSA, volunteers or residents in the neighbourhood).