Within Social Innovation we often refer to Social Enterprise and Entrepreneurship but Civic Innovation is a key area where socially innovative activities can take place.

With the strain on local authorities and health boards for greater provision of services and community empowerment, despite lower available resources; there is a growing space for Civic Innovation to address the challenges of regions and cities in innovative and effective ways; while putting citizens at the heart of that process. Citizens themselves may have solutions to offer, and engaging them in a co-design, collaborative decision making process is resourceful and a potentially more model.

Civic innovation has the potential to have wider scope and reach in addressing social and environmental issues, and is not confined to business and start-up financing; but has the option to engage with large strategic funds; and multi body collaborations that can have far reaching positive effects. There are many examples of innovative new models of citizen participation, community empowerment, participative democracy, and enabling of grassroots movements from public organisations across the UK.

During this session we will hear a few examples from local authorities and other organisations in different regions of the UK about Civic Innovation in their local context, who are trying to implement new ways of public engagement and provision, and also about the ways in which we can start to collaborate with our communities to address the variety of challenges we face as a society today. This will be an online Zoom session. The panel discussion will be followed by audience questions. Our key speakers on the panel are:

● Stevie McGowan, Creative Design Lead - Centre for Civic Innovation, Glasgow City Council

● Pauline Grandison, Developent Manager (Community Action) - The Coalfields Regeneration Trust

● Róísín Wood , Chief Executive Officer - The Community Foundation Northern Ireland

LINK TO JOIN: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/370841024487