Solutions Lab

Tending to What We Want to Grow (4.7 MB)

Navigating Complexity - The story of the Solutions Lab (7.8 MB)

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.

Theory of change
The Solutions Lab (SLab) is a public sector social innovation lab inside the City of Vancouver that began in 2016. We work with greenest city, healthy city, climate emergency, reconciliation, and equity policies and programs.

Our approach draws from design, social innovation, systems thinking, and visionary futures. We bring City staff and community collaborators together in creative, experimental, and learning-oriented processes to seek transformative solutions to some of the most complex challenges facing Vancouver.

Our contributions to change include:
- Building social innovation infrastructure
- Unlocking the potential of people
- Growing authentic and high-impact collaboration
- Shifting organizational culture
- Telling our stories of change
We have two main activities: social innovation labs that focus on complex challenges, and communities of practice that focus on building capacities, competencies, and connections.

Core competencies

The core competencies that we are learning and practicing together are:
- Visionary practices
  - Imagining and enacting visionary futures
  - Embodying agency and accountability
  - Generating abundance
- Public sector innovation practices
  - Committing to inclusion, equity, and justice
  - Thinking and acting systemically
  - Crafting through experimentation and iteration
  - Nourishing co-creation, collaboration, and reciprocity
- Inward-oriented personal practices
  - Cultivating courage and vulnerability
  - Embracing an (un)learning orientation
  - Staying with ambiguity and discomfort
Learn more about theories of change in public sector innovation labs

Current projects

The Climate Justice Field School
The Climate Justice Field School, held in the summer and fall of 2023 in Vancouver, brought together a collective of 25 people to cultivate longer-term relationships and explore shared approaches to implementations of the community-written Climate Justice Charter.

The group consisted of City staff and community members:
- Planners
- Policymakers
- Artists
- Community organizers
- Sustainability practitioners
- Activists
- Designers
- Academics
Going beyond community engagement

As a group, we were experimenting and learning our way into doing climate work differently, deepening our understanding of what power-sharing looks like with communities most impacted by climate change and climate-related decisions.

Experiential learning

Over 20 sessions, we hosted walks, site visits, immersive learning experiences, and co-design workshops at various outdoor sites, Emily Carr University, and community meeting spaces. In between these sessions, field school members were encouraged to participate in self-paced learning activities and reflections.

We are grateful for the funding support of Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance and Mitacs for this project.

Learn more
A Climate Justice Charter (CJC) for Vancouver

Written by a community-based Climate Equity Working Group throughout 2022, A Climate Justice Charter for Vancouver outlines high-level vision, principles, goals, and other key directions to create a climate just future. It looks at the connections between climate and justice and articulates the need to address both together specifically within climate work.

The document can be used as a source of education, reference, and inspiration for anyone interested in taking climate action, including local governments, institutions, and community.

Read A Climate Justice Charter for Vancouver (3 MB)

Learn about the role community leadership played in developing the CJC (3.1 MB)
Circular Food Innovation Lab
The Circular Food Innovation Lab (CFIL) collaborates with Vancouver-based businesses and organizations working in the food system.

The Solutions Lab team is shaping and guiding the process, and we are using systemic design, action research, and design processes to work towards the transformation of Vancouver's food system. We experiment with ways to intervene on systems, structures, and behaviours to prevent and reduce food waste, and create enabling conditions for circularity in and between food businesses and organizations.

Focus

How might we increase circularity in Vancouver’s food system so
- Food is not lost or wasted
- Access to food is nourishing, equitable, and culturally appropriate
- Habitats are protected for current and future generations of humans and more-than-humans
Review the final report, executive summary, tools, and resources
Equity decolonization and data community of practice
The Equity Decolonization and Data Community of Practice (EDD CP) was started as a prototype in an early Solutions Lab. It began out of a need to connect staff working on and with data at the City of Vancouver with each other, and to develop shared solutions to the challenge of integrating equity and decolonization lenses into their data-related work.

Equity and decolonization are outcomes and processes larger than us or our workplace, and our positions provide unique opportunities and barriers to support the movement forward. There is an overall lack of clarity around language, processes, coordination, goals, permissions, and reference material to past work.

This community is questioning how to do work respectfully, without co-opting language from communities, and in a way that is supportive of and doesn’t further harm staff who hold lived or intergenerational experience of systemic harm and inequities.

We are trying to create a brave space for sharing past mistakes, learnings, and opportunities, so that we can learn and move forward together, without repeating harmful actions or unsuccessful programs. We have members from all major departments and levels of the organization.

We focus on inter-related topics including:
- Community data governance and data sovereignty
- Mixed methods and disaggregated data analysis
- Using engagement to build meaningful and reciprocal relationships
There is currently a weekly semi-structured drop-in space, quarterly meetings, several emerging working groups, weekly emails, training opportunities, and an intranet site to stay connected.
Equity and Reconciliation in granting community of practice

Staff from 14 departments that provide granting programs for the community have been invited into this learning program which convened in 2021.

Together, they are exploring positionality, intersectionality, and identity and how this shapes how their granting programs are managed. They are learning from experts and each other about how to center equity, Reconciliation, and decolonization principles and practices in how we develop, deliver, and evaluate granting work.
Solutions Lab foundations and tools

We’ve curated the most important foundations and tools that we use in our practice, and made them open source for easy use by our fellow social innovators. This has been done in collaboration with the University of British Columbia, and with support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

For downloadable tools and templates visit Transforming Cities from Within

Fallow projects

Communities of practice

Between 2018 and 2021 we ran several communities of practice (CoP).

Building and practicing the new ways of working and being in service of the complex challenges that city and community CoP members were focused on.

Learn more about this work

Equity and Reconciliation in Granting Lab

How might we apply principles and practices of equity and decolonization and use a community-centered approach for all of the City’s granting processes?

This lab moved into an ongoing community of practice in 2022.

Grocery Retail Food Waste and Loss Lab

How might the City work with grocery stores to influence and support the long-term adoption of behaviours that eliminate avoidable food waste by Vancouver’s grocers and contribute to the City’s goal of zero food waste by 2040?

This lab formed the foundations for the Circular Food Innovation Lab.

Healthy Food for People and Planet Lab

How might we equitably accelerate access towards diets that are healthy for people and the planet?

Age-friendly Action Research Lab

How might we deliver a healthy city for all seniors within the complete Healthy City Framework, and without creating another strategy?

Greenest City Collaborative Leadership Mini-Lab

How might we foster collaborative leadership and support the community, other public sector organizations, individuals, and businesses in taking collective action toward the goals and targets of a new Greenest City Action Plan, beyond 2020?

Healthy City Collaborative Leadership Lab

How might we accelerate movement toward the Healthy City Strategy vision by co-creating collaborative leadership, learning and accountability across departments, organizations, and sectors?

Learn more about this lab by watching this short video , or reviewing the prototype concepts (8 MB) that were developed.

Community Connections and Resilience Lab

This lab was done in collaboration with the Collingwood Neighbourhood House.

How might we increase belonging, connectedness, and resiliency in a neighbourhood with increasing gentrification and densification?

Review a summary of the lab process, prototypes, and next steps (1.4 MB)

This lab has continued on in the neighbourhood, led by Collingwood Neighbourhood House and funded by the Vancouver Foundation.

Public Engagement Lab

How might we be more consistent, collaborative, and values-aligned in our public engagement work at the City?

Learn more about the prototype concept development (2 MB)

Public Space and Public Art Lab

How might we build a culture of collaboration between the City and community partners to unlock further potential for creative and engaged city-building through our public spaces?

Learn more about the prototype concept development (1.3 MB)

Customer Service in Engineering Lab

How might we improve customer experiences in Engineering Services?

Navigating Complexity - The story of Solutions Lab 1.0

This report shares the story of the first iteration of the Solutions Lab (2018 to 2018), including a description of lab activities and reflections from the evaluation process. This blog post summarizes the key take-aways.

Review Navigating Complexity – The story of the Solutions Lab (5.4 MB)

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

Solutions Lab

Theory of change

Current projects

The Climate Justice Field School

A Climate Justice Charter (CJC) for Vancouver

Circular Food Innovation Lab

Equity decolonization and data community of practice

Equity and Reconciliation in granting community of practice

Solutions Lab foundations and tools

Fallow projects

Learn more about the Solutions Lab

Thanks to our funding partners

Contact information, partner agencies, and website policies