Community Co-Design 

Community Co-Design is a process of collaborating with local changemakers in rural and urban Alberta municipalities to support them in innovating and solving problems identified by the community. This approach, designed by The Social Impact Lab Alberta (The SIL AB), uses proven methods to harness the strengths of the community to create social change that reflects their vision of the future. The aim of this approach is to empower community members to forge new relationships and adopt sustainable ways of working to identify and solve local problems.

In early 2023, The SIL AB team began conducting research to identify municipalities that were ready to take on a Community Co-Design Initiative. We searched for communities in Alberta that showed readiness for innovation, were geographically diverse, and faced unique pressures that shaped their identity. As a result, the Municipal District of Athabasca was selected as one of the first two communities to engage with The SIL AB. In April 2023, we began to build relationships with individuals and groups in Athabasca to hear their perspectives. We hosted interviews, community engagement sessions, and a workshop to understand the unique attributes, successes, and challenges of the community.

The Problem

From this data, The SIL AB team identified nine key themes, which community members voted on in an August workshop; they opted to focus on addressing the challenge of social issues such as transportation, housing, and mental health. Like many rural communities, Athabasca faces barriers surrounding local access to social supports, a lack of funding for initiatives like public transportation and shelter for those experiencing homelessness, and a housing shortage. Together, community members co-designed the structure of The Athabasca Design Lab (The ADL): a series of nine workshops, kicking off in October 2023, that would guide participants through a design process to further understand the challenge at hand and then generating innovative solutions to address it.

Our Approach

We hosted a four-hour workshop once or twice a month from October 2023 to June 2024, leading participants through the steps of design thinking and imparting new skills to support their journey as growing designers. The ADL sessions were as follows:

1. Kickoff and Empathy-Building: Designers connected with one another, learned about empathy, built interviewing skills, and wrote interview guides. After this session, designers conducted interviews in the community around the topic of social issues to further understand the challenge at hand.
2. Theming: Designers worked together to download the data from their interviews onto paper and sort it into broad themes. After this session, The SIL AB team created insight statements from the themed data.
3. Insights & Point of View Statements: Designers learned the skill of insight creation, learned about point of view statements, and voted on an insight to focus on for the remainder of The Athabasca Design Lab. The community selected the insight: Athabascans often learn about critical information from others in the community. Those who are less connected miss out on important opportunities, worsening isolation.
4. How Might We…? Questions: Designers worked together to develop HMW Questions that reframed the insight into future-focused, solution focused questions. Then, they voted to select one. Their final HMW was: ___. After this session, designers researched effective solutions to similar questions from around the world and shared their learnings with The SIL AB team, who created posters reflecting these inspirational ideas.
5. Ideation 1 – Designers reflected on the inspiration gallery and used the S.C.A.M.P.E.R. method to change the ideas into solutions that fit the context of Athabasca.
6. Ideation 2 & Idea Selection: Designers continued idea generation using other techniques and voted on their top ideas to prototype & test.
7. Prototyping, Test Planning,& Internal Testing: Designers worked in small groups to create prototypes of their selected ideas. Then, they created test plans to organize how they planned to gather feedback about the ideas and tested their prototypes with other participants of The ADL. After this session, designers made changes based on the feedback they received.
8. External Testing &Iteration: Designers tested their prototypes with the broader community and made changes based on feedback.
9. Finale & Action Planning: Designers presented their final ideas to the community. The community provided feedback about their preferred idea to implement first, and designers began planning how they might take action to make their ideas real in Athabasca County.

Results

Community Co-Design in Athabasca resulted in several positive outcomes. Here are a few:

• ‍Skill Development: Through The ADL, the SIL AB team taught participant-designers essential design and social innovation skills like interviewing techniques, data analysis, idea generation, and Consent Decision Making. These frameworks and tools have been shared with designers through an online file sharing system so they can continue to access the tools and use the skills they’ve learned.‍
• Empowerment Through Mindsets and Collaboration: Designers were equipped with the mindsets they needed to think critically and work together effectively. By fostering a culture of collaboration where the focus was connected to a shared vision for a better future, The ADL designers overcame challenges with ease. ‍
• Sharing Knowledge and Resources: Designers helped one another learn and grow by sharing their knowledge and resources; this often included information or frameworks unknown to facilitators. By fostering connection between designers who didn’t typically work together, The SIL AB created conditions for shared learning and professional development that exceeded expectations. ‍
• Improving Cross-Sector Collaboration: The ADL brought together people from many different backgrounds, including non-profits, community services, local government, schools, small businesses, and even young people. This mix of perspectives ensured that the solutions were good for everyone and fostered new relationships in the community, increasing potential for future collaboration. ‍
• Including Community Voices: Wherever possible, designers sought input from the broader community through interviews, conversations, surveys, community engagement activities, and invitations to join the workshops. Because of this approach, the resulting ideas reflect the community’s desires, hopes, and unique context.  

Summary

The SILAB’s Community Co-Design project in Athabasca has led to new connections, an increase in collaboration, and significant learning for participants and facilitators. Through interviews, community engagement, and collaborative sessions, the initiative sought to understand Athabasca's strengths, challenges, and aspirations. A community design team from diverse sectors joined forces to make a positive change in their community and embarked on a journey of transformation that included identifying problems, creating and testing solutions and presenting them before the community; this has culminated in the selection of exciting opportunities to improve communication in Athabasca County. In September, we will be kicking off work with a cross-functional team to further develop and implement the idea of a Community Connector in Athabasca: someone who will provide resources, information, and referrals for people in the community.

If you would like more information or would like to join the action team, please email info@thesocialimpactlab.com.