Outcomes & Debrief notes

The stats:

Book club: 60 people engaged.

OLA outreach (men’s shed, Flexi school, QPASST and DBCYP): 158 engagements

Ola community process (design thinking, making and final event) total: 119 engagements (31 people experienced it)

Here are the notes from debriefing with the community members that created an event at The Edge

debrief_with_ola_community.docx

The full text below:

DEBRIEF WITH OLA COMMUNITY: BIO CRISIS

What participants learnt:

“insight into the creative world and creative jobs that are in that space, activities that are in that space. Things that I know that I want to get involved in but I don't know the door to go through. I have been taking it all in and seeing what the bigger picture is. The world that I have come from in defence and it is one typical way of doing things. It is a closed environment. I wanted to see the creative space. The way that groups are facilitated. I loved it and was always learning. ”

“ I learnt a lot of things. Doing the laser cutting and learning that this space is available. Learning, that I could walk in and take cardboard and start prototyping. I might start doing this on my own time and do it every chance that I get. As an open invitation to the community this process really works. I have walked around the edge and everything looks super cool and I don’t know how to use this stuff. I was too scared to start doing stuff” “I didn’t even know that all of this existed. After you showed us all around and I was walking back up the stairs and I said to Sam, Let me get this right we’ve got to make something use all of this really cool stuff to do it and we get to do it for free. All we have to do is give up our free time. This is so awesome. What an awesome opportunity.”

“Meeting people, maybe someone will do a project somewhere and you know maybe we can start networking or something really cool. Negotiating stuff and doing a creative process. The whole process is very cool. “

“ I felt really welcomed. “

“I never felt like I wasn’t a part of the big picture. The way you facilitated that was brilliant. Every time we came here we were absolutely contributing to what was finally produced. “

“Everyone’s idea is welcome that was on Facebook really set the tone for the process”

“I really like the way that you split it up. It helped me to define what I wanted to do in the project. I really like that part of the process. I felt like at any stage I could have said I wanted to shift. It was very open and welcoming process and bunch of facilitators. You guys were always there for when I said I wanted to do this or that.”

Slack was a great collaborative tool for this group. Everyone agreed.

The challenges in the process:

Timing was challenging. It was right before the lead up of the end of year.

To help with this timing the following ideas came up:

- meet twice a week or have a mid-week session.

- Or do a more earlier in the process. Maybe less brainstorming as part of the process.

- Some more case studies of past projects.

- Inductions along the process would have helped the makers a little to see the possibilities or even just a demo day.

The group also wanted more fabrication time.

There were makers and cerebral people. There was a tension because of this. There was a lot of people who wanted to make things.

“The frustration is equal to the challenge. You have a group of people that come together and don’t know each other. You have to have everyone on the same page and they have to have the motivation to make it work. Anything I do here helps my working space. Everyone made it work that turned up every week “ “On that day you said that we have done a lot of this group stuff and said break away into groups that you might want to work in. I found that to be a defining moment for me. You let us go where we wanted to go. Maybe it could have happened a week earlier.”

Coming back to The Edge??

One of the participants had the laser booked for the next day. Another participant had just pitched a project to a client that would involve the sign being laser cut.

The space has been opened up that they feel like they can come back with ease and they know so many regular people that come to the edge now as well. “I didn’t know how to access this kind of machinery before”

“I had a tour a year ago and I was on the mailing list every single month trying to get onto the inductions. I was trying for a year. Then when I saw this I thought this is my in. I sat with safari and chrome open at 6pm and refreshing them both to get a slot in the inductions”

“Very easy for us to walk in now and engage.”

The best things:

“Being there on the day was fun to do . We had a let’s do it energy!”

Many got involved to meet different people and learn new skills.