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Good ideas seems to always come in the 11th hour. On Monday, we went to the bookstore, toy store, and zoo looking for inspiration to help us create family-facing materials. On Tuesday, we mocked up some early measurement tools, service propositions, and branding. On Wednesday, we refined those ideas. On Thursday, we made physical models of these things and crowded around the table to play our new time game and family personality test. Now, on Friday, we've decided we didn't get things quite right on Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Tomorrow, on Saturday, we'll start sharing and further developing our ideas with families in their homes. So that leaves the next 12 hours to actualise some of our revised thinking (Well, really, that leaves the next 12 hours for Chris to visualise our revised thinking!)
The top-down and bottom-up nature of our work means that some weeks we're working directly with families, and other weeks we're translating what we're learning to people who work with and for families. The last few weeks have been all about translation: to practitioners, managers, and policymakers across the health, education, and child protection spaces. That's prompted us to revise our story, and figure out what exactly we want to communicate. Probably the biggest shift in our story has been what we mean by thriving families.
Three weeks ago we ran a family festival for 100 families. Two weeks ago we finished up our family dinners and ethnographies with a trip to Port Augusta. Over the last week, we've been trying to make sense 'family thriving' and identifying opportunities areas with our ethnographers and sounding board. Phew!
The definite highlight of my fourth week with the family project was our free family festival. The hours of party planning and event management more than paid off. I believe Sarah, Chris, myself; families and volunteers all walked away having learned something about friends, family, neighbours, or ourselves. The festival allowed people to put the stress of day-to-day life aside and gave space to see people in a different light. It was so refreshing to see parents walk away with a sense of pride that they had been able to share a special day together without the added stress of cost. I think there was room for further improvements or developments in running a family festival however overall it was agreed that the day was a huge success
Recently I found myself in the strange position of defending social innovation to a committed community development worker. It was a strange position because I come from a community development background and his position was much the same as the one I held myself before I started this job only 6 months ago.
"I learned something new about my children today," a mom commented as she left the Family Festival, with three kids, three kites, and three wind chimes in tow. That felt good to hear. We put on the family festival to create the conditions for families to discover, learn, and have fun, together. The 100 or so families that came out to the Rajah Street Reserve last Sunday certainly seemed to have fun, many trying out a flat white or a professional massage for the first time. Yet not all families learned and had fun, together, as a whole unit. At times, kids were sent off to learn from Allan, the cartoonist, or Matt, the sound guy, while parents hung out at the cafe and supervised from the periphery.
Week three has definitely stretched my learning in a new and exciting direction. As a method of developing a holistic understanding of families and their communities, Sarah, Chris and myself decided to host a free family festival with a focus of developmental experiences for the family. Through our ethnographies and dinners we’ve seen that many families operate in silos with little emphasis being placed on the family as a connected group that interacts and enjoys experiences as a whole. Our developmental family festival is one attempt at us introducing this concept to families, what attracts them, what engages them and equally as important, what doesn’t! This theme of ‘togetherness’ is not new to my career, it is something that I have seen or not seen with many families. Its something we know is vital to child development. I know as a child it was something that I craved and has in turn created some of my happiest memories.
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