Get out your glitter, public innovation is having a festival of learning. It’s 3 weeks in June, it’ll be free. We’re still refining the details so sign up to our newsletter to keep in the loop.

We’re curious about the moment we’re living through. We’re full of questions. And we know you are too. So for three weeks at the beginning of June, we’re going to host international conversations, events and share resources from our network to support public innovation. Bringing people together to ask good questions with us.

Think of it as holding a space to share what we’re all learning. To make sure we inform the future of public innovation with the lessons of now. Because as we begin to rebuild and recover, we’ll need these practices - of creativity, resourcefulness and resilience - and those ideas we now know to be possible.

Let’s do this together, in (an online) place that’s dedicated to learning with each other. We’re looking forward to having you join us.

Why a festival?

Good festivals converge in a place together; are about meeting new people, hearing interesting things, and putting on your funnest outfit. They’re celebrations, acts of confidence, of defiance, and a chance to assert a sense of optimism and solidarity. It’s that spirit we want now.

What the festival is

It will run from 1 June to 19 June. We’ll run events, sessions and share resources for you to learn in time and place. We’re planning a variety of formats, a mixture of live global, regional and local conversations, plus sessions you can do in your own time.

Oh and, it’s all free.

Who’s going to be there

The final program is still taking shape! We don’t know 100% what it will look like yet. We do know it will be inquiry based. Broadly looking at what’s happening to public sector innovation in this moment, and what we want to happen next.

Some of the things we’ll explore:

• Futures and Foresight - what can we learn from how previous futures work has been applied to start to prepare for the next potential policy domain, the next unknown.
• The New Possible - it’s becoming apparent that the status-quo is turning out to be more malleable than thought, previously ‘impossible’ things are being done in mere days - how is this happening? How do we maximise this? How do we make sure we don’t revert back?
• Next Practice - We’re seeing new practices and ways of working in crisis, we’re also seeing an understandable default to what is comfortable. How might we better identify these emerging practices so we can sustain that muscle memory working as a joined up system, as a deeply connected community?

For updates

Over the next few weeks we’ll be launching a Festival webpage where all the sessions will be listed and you can freely register directly there. In the meantime, sign up to our newsletter for updates as we build our program!

The same as you, we’ve had to shift.

As a global learning collective, we are dedicated to creating a culture of experimentation and the capacity to respond to uncertainty and complexity - if now isn’t the moment to join together and share some of our thoughts, observations and questions, then when is?

The States of Change team - me, James, Jesper and Brenton are repurposing our facilitating, convening, learning designing, researching and all-rounder skills into festival production. We know you might be tired of talking about a ‘new normal’, or you might be tired of endless zoom meetings - we’re dedicated to making this festival a meeting place which will come alive with the creativity and energy of our community.

Get excited, get involved

If you want to discuss session ideas, want to take part, have questions you think we should be asking at the festival, or whatever else springs to mind. Then drop me, Nicole, a line.