A group of people standing in a circle collaborating during a Solutions Lab session.

Solutions Lab

Our city is facing increasing pressure to address complex challenges like reconciliation, affordability, equity, climate change, sustainability, social isolation, falling trust in government, and many others. The go-to structures and processes of local governments were set up for very different purposes, challenges, and responsibilities than those we face now, and if governments don’t adapt we’ll be left behind. 

We’re being called, both as individual public servants and as an organization, to experiment, learn, and scale new solutions in response to these pressures. We’re being called to respond to the root causes of these systemic challenges, not just apply incremental quick fixes.

The Solutions Lab is a response to this call.

Current projects

We are grateful to be on the unceded and traditional territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

We are working to innovate within a colonial institution, and are particularly grateful for the gifts of knowledge about Indigenous ways of thinking, being, knowing, and doing that we have received, and are doing our best to integrate into our selves and practices each day.

Learn more about the Solutions Lab

Email: lily.raphael@vancouver.ca

Thanks to our funding partners