About SIX events
SIX is a global community of around 5000 individuals and organisations – including small NGOs and global firms, public agencies and academics - committed to promoting social innovation and growing the capacity of the field.
SIX runs a series of activities:
TelePresence
SIX TelePresences make use of unique Cisco teleconferencing technologies to connect social innovators from across the globe to discuss topics ranging from ‘Hubs Labs and Incubators,’ to ‘The Theoretical Foundations of Social Innovation’ and ‘Creating an Environment for Social Innovation to Flourish.’
Learn more about the SIX TelePresence Series here.
Accelerators
The SIX Accelerators are annual, three-day events that are built on the Accelerator Model—by bringing SIX community members together in an intimate group to discuss and find innovative solutions to very specific challenges, these events concentrate our collective intelligence and accelerate the process of innovation. Past SIX Accelerators have addressed ‘Co-creating Democracy: Citizen Passion in the 21st Century,’ and ‘Innovation and Opportunity in an Ageing Society.’
Summer Schools
Like the Accelerators, our Summer Schools are designed to connect social innovators face to face, and support the strengthening of their networks, and inspire them to innovate new solutions to social issues. While Spring Schools have a tight focus on a single issue, Summer Schools address broad subjects, encouraging a diversity of insights, inputs, and inspirations.
In 2008, SIX held its inaugural International Summer School in Spain. 'Scaling up Social Innovation' focused on the practical challenges of social innovation, specifically how successful innovations could be grown and replicated. In July 2009, in Lisbon, Portugal, the second International Summer School focused on ‘Recovery through Innovation'. 125 people from 24 countries - both social innovation experts and those who are new to the field came together to share experiences and discuss the challenges and possible solutions to the current global financial crisis.
Following their successes, ‘SIX and the City' 2010 was held in Singapore. Over the past year, city innovation has been at the heart of discussions amongst the SIX community - Discussions ranging from design for social innovation, tackling chronic disease, climate change and carbon reductions, providing and caring for aging populations, community engagement and helping the unemployed back to work, have often converged around cities and social innovation. The 2010 SIX summer school gave participants the opportunity to further explore these issues.
In 2011 the global social innovation community met in Gdynia, Poland, for 'Social Innovation in 2015: What will it look like and how can we achieve it?'. The participants came toghether to discuss challenges and opportunities for the social innovation field, and created a strategy to increase the capacity of the field moving forward.
Our Summer School in 2012 on Growing Pains for Social Innovation was organised in collaboration with The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) in Adelaide, Australia. We focused on two clusters of issues which we know are critically important: ‘growing pains for our organisations’ and ‘systemic innovation’.