About Creative Communities Int.

Creative Communities International is an incubator for social innovations based in Brisbane Australia. Through our family of web sites we aim to help individuals, communities and decision-makers unlock their latent creative genius.

This website is our incubator and workshop. You can watch new innovations being hatched, join with others in hatching new innovations, be inspired by what other people are doing or post a record of your own experimentations in changing the world through play. This site is not for eveyone. You must earn membership by finding your way through the Seven Myths Maze.

Our other websites will deal with specific issues, such as traffic, community consultation, and economic development. They will more formally present the outcomes of the experimentation on the Play for Change site.

Creative Communities International was set up in 2001 by David Engwicht and Ingrid Burkett. Here is an outline of our passion and our plan.
 
Our Passion is to be partners with others in creating more creative communities. We want to:

Build the capacity of communities to be more creative in the way they tackle community issues.

Inspire communities to find innovative ways of tackling social issues without abdicating all the responsibility to government or other sectors of the community.

Assist politicians, decision-makers, city staff and residents to 'think outside the box' when looking for ways to address community issues.

Help political leaders to overcome the significant limitations that adversarial forms of politics and public dialogue is placing on the decision-making process.

Help cities and government departments find more creative ways of involving citizens in the decision-making process.

Stimulate individuals, communities, decision-makers, and entire cities to reach their fullest creative potential.
 
Our Plan to turn our dream into reality is:

Spaces for creative exploration. CCI creates physical and social spaces that give permission for people to think creatively about a broad range of issues. This web site is an example of the kind of spaces that we create - spaces for both dreaming and complex intellectual exploration.

Experimental projects. Incubating new innovations requires experimentation. CCI establishes partnerships with others to explore and develop potential innovations. We are already working with a number of cities on projects like the Pace Car. Our next focus area is community consultation. (See The Third Space Project for details.)

Training and coaching. We offer advice, coaching and training workshops to cities, government bodies, citizen groups and NGO's in a range of subject areas. (See Employing Us for details.)

Grants and awards: A portion of all CCI income is invested in encouraging innovative community projects.

Publications: From time to time, CCI will publish books and discussion papers. We hope to publish a regular 'best stories of social innovation from around the world'.

Mentoring: We are developing both short term and longer-term mentoring programs for those wanting to develop creative approaches to engagement with the wider community.