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THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS FESTIVAL
UNLIKELY CONNECTIONS FOR SOCIAL CHANGE
BUILDING A COALITION
OF COLLABORATORS
IN 2015
In September 2014, Collaborate, the Social
Innovation Exchange, and the Calouste
Gulbenkian Foundation, hosted the Unusual
Suspects Festival of ideas, solutions and
debates. We explored what happens when
social innovation, collaboration, and a mix of
unusual suspects come together to address
some of society’s most pressing and complex
challenges.
3 curators
4 days
15 countries
28 unique
venues
35 hosts
Over 1000
collaborators
THE UNUSUAL SUSPECTS
SIX KEY THEMES
During the festival we listened closely to your
ideas, thoughts and energy, and captured 6
key themes:
QQ Power and dynamics
QQ Collaborative skills and competences
QQ Mobilising ‘hidden’ collaborators
QQ Creating accessible platforms
QQ Leadership and resilience
QQ Scaling great collaborations
POWER AND
DYNAMICS
When working with diverse people and
perspectives we must understand and adapt
to different dynamics and levels of power. To
effectively collaborate, we must trust each
other and begin to relinquish our own power.
IT’S A SKILL
NOT A HOBBY
As sectors, organisations, and individuals, we
need to acknowledge that there are specific
skill sets and competencies that are needed
to effectively collaborate. We must invest
time and resources to building collaboration
readiness.
“
The issue is more about
under-valuing the innate skill
and drive we have to connect: to
collaborate. We naturally look to
collaborate as a way of survival.
We need to recognise and nurture
those natural abilities and design
systems more aligned with this
way of working.
”
MOBILISING HIDDEN
COLLABORATORS
If we want to catalyse inclusive approaches
to complex problems, we need to ensure
voices that matter are heard. We must find,
empower, and mobilise the unusual suspects.
“
The mix of attendees was really powerful - talking about social
problems with people from different backgrounds provided a
different perspective which is really powerful.
”
“
There is certainly a gap to make up between those who are on
the ground delivering the civic partnerships and those who are on a
higher level and effect policy. I think it’s starting to open with festivals
like the Unusual Suspects Festival, and showing you that these
conversations can happen and you don’t feel like you’re not tackling
these problems alone”.
”
CREATING ACCESSIBLE
PLATFORMS
Platforms enable and invite co-production
and reduce dependency. We need to actively
curate more platforms for action and act as
facilitators rather than directors – it is then
that new models and innovations can launch.
“
The atmosphere at the
festival facilitated sharing and
collaborating among different
organisations and individuals.
The word ‘Unusual’ allowed every
kind of collaboration. All kinds of
organisations regardless of sector,
size and location collaborated
with each other.
”
LEADERSHIP AND
RESILIENCE
Collaboration requires a more distributed and
less hierarchal form of leadership. We must
reconfigure who and what a leader should be,
and support individuals as a community of
collaborators.
“
Leadership doesn’t always
take a formal position of power.
Many leaders exercise soft power
to encourage those around them
- we need better collaborative
leadership.
”
SCALING GREAT
COLLABORATION
Good collaboration should be scalable and
sustainable. We need to rethink impact in
terms of the success of our collaborations and
not just our organisations.
We’ve also pulled together a Storify of the festival so you can follow
all of the great comments, insights, ideas, suggestions, and resources.
THROUGH THE LENS OF
THE HOSTS...
The decentralised nature of the Festival allowed our hosts to create
their own unique experiences of collaboration as well as explore it
across different thematical areas.
“
We welcomed over 50 people from around London and around
the world to engage with complex and thorny social issues in an
atmosphere replete with conviviality, challenging questions, and
hearty soup. The event was real with unpretentious conversations
about how to make positive social change.
Tricia Hackett, The Young Foundation
We are really happy to have taken part in this festival. It was really
exciting and inspiring, and we hope to take part next year.
Anna Lerner, British Council
We are really grateful to have been a part of the line-up and we felt
that our event went really well due to the passion and enthusiasm of
the attendees.
Sarah Brent, UnLtd
It’s not often that you get to think about the time to think about
the big issues, the big questions. It feels like there’s been some space
and time made for the unusual suspects to come together and talk. Liz Morton, Battersea Arts Centre
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It was a great process and an inspiring event!
Julia Stevens, Uprising
SO WHAT NEXT FOR THE
UNUSUAL SUSPECTS IN 2015
AND BEYOND?
The Unusual Suspects Festival has been the
start of a great conversation and the start
of many new collaborations. Over the next
year, we will be working to accelerate these
conversations and actions, by:
QQ Further developing the festival concept
QQ Working to meet more unusual suspects
and the best ways to support their
collaborations
QQ And committing to do one thing
differently, based on the themes of the
festival – what will be yours?
Please tweet the one thing you will do
differently with the hashtag #unusualsuspects
THANKS TO:
Dare to be a Collaborator?
Watch the fantastic #unusualsuspects
Film 2014
Missed the Unusual Suspects in 2014?
Watch the highlights film here:
join our growing coalition of collaborators by emailing
[email protected]
www.collaboratei.com
www.socialinnovationexchange.org