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Welcome to the Grove 3547 Social Lab Archive

By • On • In 8 – Participants, Overview, The Archive • 1 min read

The hosting team of Grove 3547 are delighted to be able to make available the vast majority of the documents, images and reports that we used throughout the first cycle of the Grove 3547 social lab.

Our intention is to build an open archive of files under a creative commons license, so that people in Chicago and around the world, can utilize our tools, practices and learnings in their work on complex problems.

What you’ll find inside is everything from our facilitators’ run sheets to our workshop reports, information about our Agile regime to agendas for dialogue interview training. We’re making them open so that you can take them and build on them – they’re by no means the blueprint to running a social lab, but we do hope that they may provide support and insight for those working to address our world’s most complex challenges.

In this archive you will find a glimpse into the work that goes into designing and delivering a social lab. The documents, tools, and files have been organized in a timeline which follows the course of the social lab, beginning with Governance, moving into Preconditions, and then moving into the launch of the actual Lab itself.

Thanks for joining us and we hope that you enjoy the Archive!

The Grove 3547 Team

This archive is a project undertaken by The Chicago Community Trust and Roller Strategies to share and document our social labs work in Chicago in 2016 and 2017.

 

                                                          

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Governance

By • On • In 1 - Agile • 1 min read

The documents in this section are a breakdown of the governance structures, management tools, and high level relationships that preceded the launch of the lab. Governance deals with the constitution of and relationships between the funders, clients, lab teams, secretariat, and hosting team. It also deals with setting up an information infrastructure that can organize lab communications at all levels.

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Lab Cycle Diagrams

By • On • In 1 - Agile, 2 - Preconditions, 3 - Kick Off Workshop, 4 - Studio 1, 5 - Studio 2, 6 - Studio 3 • 1 min read

The first cycle of Grove3547 ran for a four month period. This period is what we call “one cycle” or a Minimum Viable Lab. While very short, this allows enough time to demonstrate the process and generate value within the system. This diagram shows the birds-eye-view breakdown of activities over the four month period including specific workshops each month and then the monthly sprints where prototyping teams are working independently to test out the latest versions of the prototypes.

The repeating cycles of a lab look something like this:

This is a full, detailed timeline of one cycle including preconditions:

 

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Preconditions Phase

By • On • In 2 - Preconditions • 1 min read

The “preconditions” for a social lab include a number of pre-requisite ingredients that need to be present to allow for the possibility of success. When launching or building the foundation for a social lab, the beginning is of utmost importance. The ideas, people, power structures, institutions, and relationships that constitute the founding moment of a lab will often determine to a large extent the success or failure of the outcomes of the lab itself.

Preconditions are, if you like, a little like pulling together everything you need in order to start an expedition. Starting an expedition without each of these preconditions in place risks failure. Forgetting to take enough water or to take a readily available map represent a type of failure that can easily be avoided.

Finally, preconditions should not be confused for a “strategy” – they are literally preconditions for your strategy.

In a social lab, among the outputs of the preconditions phase are the following:

  • Challenge – can we clearly state what the challenge is that we want to address?
  • Do we have the necessary Resources to start work?
  • Do we have the right People (in terms of either skills or representation) on board?
  • Strategic Direction – our best guess as to what might address the challenge we wish to address? Preconditions represent a starting-point and not an end point.
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Dialogue Interviews

By • On • In 2 - Preconditions, 9 - Reporting • 1 min read

Dialogue Interviews are a part of the sensing phase of the Preconditions for the Lab. They allow for a deeper understanding of the context and systemic dynamics of the social challenge at hand. They allow for a building of trust between key players in the system and the lab team, as well as an immersion in the unique perspectives of those with the most experience with the local context.

 

The Guide to Dialogue Interviews gives the interviewer and the scribe an outline of how they can organize themselves in preparation, during and after the dialogue interview process. For more information on Dialogue Interviews read the Dialogue interview handout, below.

GUIDE TO DIALOGUE INTERVIEWS

 

The Dialogue Interview Handout provides details of the theory behind dialogue interviews along with more information on setting up and running the interviews. If you would like a shorter handout with just the interview protocol you can down load the Guide to Dialogue Interviews, above.

DIALOGUE INTERVIEW HANDOUT

 

The Dialogue Interview Self Assessment is a form that participants completed before and after the Dialogue Interview Training session. It asks them to self assess their level of experience in relation to listening and scribing. Participants completed the form at the start of the session and then revisited their answers after the training to see if their self-assessment had changed.

DIALOGUE INTERVIEW SELF-ASSESSMENT

 

The Dialogue Interview Training Agenda shows the facilitators agenda/outline for a training session for individuals interested in conducting Dialogue Interviews. The training is a one-day session where the outcomes for participants are:

  • Understand the rationale and method of Dialogue Interviews
  • Practice each role – Interviewee, Interviewer, and Scribe
  • Have a grounded self assessment of their ability to conduct Dialogue Interviews
DIALOGUE INTERVIEW TRAINING AGENDA

 

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Diverging Chicago Research

By • On • In 2 - Preconditions, 9 - Reporting, Overview • 1 min read

Diverging Chicago is a series of graphs produced from statistical data which compare a number of social indicators in Chicago. They represent one view of the city and give some grounding to the Grove3547 challenge. While they do not represent individual views or experiences, they are an aggregate view of what is going on systemically during a specific period of time in the region. This kind of research can help clarify intentions for, and support the case for doing a social lab.

DIVERGING CHICAGO

 

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Lost Youth Report

By • On • In 2 - Preconditions • 1 min read

University of Illinois at Chicago produced Lost: The Crisis Of Jobless and Out Of School Teens and Young Adults In Chicago, Illinois and the U.S. This report was instrumental in highlighting much of the current situation in Chicago and helped to frame the preconditions work for Grove3547.

LOST YOUTH REPORT
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Grove Launch: The Kick-off and First Sprint

By • On • In 3 - Kick Off Workshop • 1 min read

The Kick-off workshop took place September 7-9, 2016, at The Rebuild Foundation’s Black Cinema House in Greater Grand Crossing, Chicago.

This was the first workshop with lab participants and constituted the official launch of the lab. The Kick-off introduced participants to the Lab process and each other. They engaged in systems thinking exercises to help them deepen their understanding of the social system and its issues, and self-organized into five prototyping teams that would carry them through the rest of the activities in the cycle.

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The Grove Kick Off Workshop

By • On • In 3 - Kick Off Workshop, 9 - Reporting • 1 min read

The Kick-off Orientation Pack is the information packet that lab participants were given at the kickoff workshop.

KICK-OFF ORIENTATION PACK

 

Kick-off Facilitator Agenda is a detailed breakdown of the Hosting and Facilitation Teams’ timeline for the kickoff workshop. It highlights timings, processes and notes for the team to consider and keep in mind during the workshop. Agendas like this were usually designed in advance, and then iterated a number of times before and during the process to adjust and adapt to the shifting context within the group and the project.

KICK-OFF FACILITATOR AGENDA

 

The Kick-off Evaluation Form was given to participants at the close of the Kick-off workshop to gague their experience and offer feedback to the Hosting Team.

KICK-OFF EVALUATION FORM

 

The Kick-off Workshop Report details the proceedings of the Kick-off workshop. It provides information from the different sessions of the workshop, and highlights the processes and some of the methods used during the three days.

KICK-OFF REPORT

 

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The Grove’s 2nd Studio Workshop

By • On • In 5 - Studio 2 • 1 min read

The Grove’s 2nd studio workshop was held November 15-16, 2016 at Gallery Guichard in Bronzeville. The workshop’s main goals were to enable the prototyping teams to reconnect as a whole, meet with a number of guests and allies in the community and to explore ways that their prototypes could be integrated into the broader system. They also sought to receive input and feedback from community members and friends, and share learnings across teams. There was also an structured opportunity for teams to decide whether to “pivot or persevere”, meaning  change direction drastically or continue with their current strategic direction. Teams also planned and shared next steps of their work in relation to their prototypes.

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The Grove’s 3rd Studio Workshop

By • On • In 6 - Studio 3 • 1 min read

The Grove’s 3rd studio workshop was held December 6-7, 2016, and was organized primarily as an opportunity for the prototyping teams to share their prototypes and learnings with the broader community in Bronzeville and Chicago as a whole. A wide variety of guests were invited to the studio to hear presentations, engage in discussion and watch videos documenting the teams’ work, with structured conversations for offering feedback and engaging in critical discussion.

 

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