Yvonne Roberts

Description: : My father’s job meant I spent my childhood living in a number of countries, in Europe, Africa and Asia. From an early age, I witnessed how ordinary people innovate to survive and then to improve their own lives, and the lives of their children and their communities. Taking action is one thing – becoming aware of the potential in those actions and hearing narratives that convey the imagination, confidence and resilience such innovatory actions entail has yet to happen on a scale that matters. On the contrary, often the language around social innovation fuels an unecessary mystique that creates barriers. Once those barriers are dismantled, yet more innovatory talents will be released; more lives will be changed. That’s the area that I’m interested in and in which I would like to recruit allies. In the 1970s, then without children, I was working in current affairs television. I was also active in a trade union. I joined forces with representatives from other unions and we established one of the first work place nurseries in the country. At the time, we didn’t know that what we were doing was social innovation. Thirty years later, after involvement in a number of grass roots projects, I became one of a team transforming a playground in a Victorian primary school with a large proportion of chidlren from economically deprvied backgrounds. The 420 children came from over forty countries. We worked with them for five years to create a new world in their playground that included an open air green oak amphitheatre; a peace garden; an activity centre; a climbing wall; a wild garden and a number of other features. Again, we didn’t know that was an example of social innovation – but as pioneers in the field of playground transformation, in the design, consultation, fund raising and execution of the project, every child in the school was acting as a social innovator. Would it have mattered if they had known that at the time? Would it have made a long term difference if we had all understood more clearly how we were innovating and what tools worked better than others? I believe it might. For every story told about social innovation, it’s power and efficacy grows. My background is as a journalist in television, newsprint, magazines and radio. I originally specialised in the Middle East then moved on to documentaries, politics, social policy and comment. I have written several non-fiction books on men, women, relationships and the politics of the family; contributed to other works and authored four novels, now working on a fifth.