This year’s Systems Innovation Learning Festival offers a stage to the faces of systems change. SILP’s Experimentation Fund allowed us to learn together for a year, as a Cohort of eight experimental projects around the globe. We practiced how development funding could be done differently, through exploring what happens when you focus on putting learning at the centre, rather than results.
The Learning Festival is a chance for us to share what we have learned, along every step of this long and exciting journey. Aligned with the values that guided us in our work, we promise to share honestly the good, the confusing, and the unresolved. You will hear about the behind the scenes, the often invisible, and the How of the work:
- How do you design a fund, if you wish for people to act from a sense of courage and innovation, encouraging people to bring their best?
- How do you determine the criteria for selecting grantees to ensure that projects are locally relevant, experimental, and systemic?
- How do you bring vastly diverse projects together and what can they learn from each other?
- How do you facilitate conversations and actions that unite different parts of the system, bridging the old with the new for a shared purpose?
- How do you learn together to address power dynamics in the room, and understand their impact on the work?
So often the systemic approach is intimidating, seems too big a change to implement, and it is frankly daunting deciding on where to even begin. We are coming to you with day-to-day stories, micro-movements, trials and beginnings, and a look into how they have allowed for systems to connect differently, to reflect on themselves differently, and to act together.
Then, there is more. Building on a year-long learning journey with the Cohort, we decided to design and deliver the Festival in a decentralised way. This means each day is created & facilitated by a team of SILP Fund Experimenters, together with Climate-KIC. This allows us to truly shift the conversation from “talking about” those doing the work to one where those doing the work on the ground speak in their own name.
The Learning Festival by the Systems Innovation Learning Partnership is an annual opportunity to explore the cutting edge of systems innovation and learning, bringing together diverse organisations’ in a participatory space to discuss and challenge each other on these issues. We call this event a Festival, as we see it as an opportunity to celebrate the journey of learning together, of weaving what systems change means in different contexts and coming together with fellow systemic thinkers & doers.
Taking place across the 17, 18 and 19 of September, each three-hour session will tackle a different question:
- Tuesday, September 17: Transformative funding for systemic learning
What are the stories of systemic differences this fund has activated?
- Wednesday, September 18: Ecosystem response to systemic challenges
How do you allow for learning & experimentation to guide the way to connected action? - Thursday, September 19: Shifting power dynamics together
How do climate change and social justice come together in deep collaboration?
Each session will take place from 2-5pm CEST.
Some sessions might include participatory break-out conversations.
Large group sessions will be recorded.
This event is open to the public & free of charge. We appreciate you supporting us by inviting all who should be part of this conversation.
If you are interested in joining us for the Learning Festival, register here:
https://climate-kic-org.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYsdeiorDItGtEMmQ84iMY0zx6e_9KbnvhR
Reach out on silp@climate-kic.org if you would like to explore and co-create with us beyond our offer.