Grounded Space

WHO

InwithForward a social design organization making human services more human. They believe social systems should work more like trampolines and less like safety nets. Therefore, their work focuses on exploring how might we make that a reality.

WHAT

Grounded Space has been a vehicle in re-imagining what a support system looks like that resource people to bounce-up and forwards in their lives. It is Canada’s first collective of social and community organizations dedicated to ongoing Research & Development. Grounded Space builds teams to do research, ideation, prototyping and implementation. It focuses on building internal team capacity and culture to make this work on-going. This is in contrast to much of what we see today, the one-off pilot projects without the built in continuity and supports.

WHY

Today, many private sector companies invest in R&D to stay relevant and have a stake in the future, few social services have the scope to do the same. Their innovation happens on the fly, rather than with intention and rigour. The intention was to create a space where social service organizations could tap into the similar resourcing as the private sector to help them better address current and future needs.

WILD CARD

Conconi Family Foundation has worked closely with the InwithForward team over the years to unpack and explore this line of thinking as well as an advocate for Social R&D as something that brings great benefit to our sector. We continue to explore how might we further this work.