Birmingham’s hosts first global sustainability jam

A 48-hour design challenge is to be set and solved by groups of people in cities around the world, including right here in Birmingham.

Ordinary people will bring together their personalities, ideas and skills to create something extraordinary on the theme of Sustainability, and for the first time, Birmingham will be joining this movement. You can too.

The Jam is a place to share ideas, contribute knowledge and learn about the design thinking process. People all over the world will gather together in their local communities to create new services inspired by one common theme.

For the first time, the Sustainability Jam will be hosted in Birmingham, bringing a much needed gathering of the city’s innovative, collaborative minds to facilitate change. In the spirit of experimentation, innovation, co-operation and friendly competition, teams will be assigned randomly and have less than 48 hours to develop and prototype completely new services inspired by a secret theme.

At the end of the weekend, their collection of brand new services will be published to the world through the global jam network.

The jam is an opportunity to unite designers, students, academics, business people, techies, unemployed people, customers, parents, thinkers and doers. It is known for inspiring unlikely collaborations, building new networks and relationships between people from different walks of life.

Lorna Prescott from Dudley Council Voluntary Service says:

“A key difference between working in a team at the Jam compared to at work was that, the pace was faster because we were working consistently working together for consecutive days. This meant we could prototype, make decisions and move on quite quickly.

“At work, you tend to have a meeting for an hour or two and then people disperse and it takes a while to get things done.”

Walking groups of people through the design thinking process generates fresh perspective and new insights into problems which are often very complex. By empathizing with people and then generating and prototyping ideas, the jam community helps to build a greater collective intelligence about ways problems can be approached.

The people behind launching Birmingham’s first ever Global Sustainability Jam are Spaghetti, a partnership of strategic designers who believe that cultivating creative confidence in all people will help to build a better Birmingham.

The Global Sustability Jam is on from 30th October – 1st November 2015 at Impact Hub Birmingham.
To take part or to find out more, contact Spaghetti at www.wearespaghetti.cc
Twitter: @SpaghettiLabs #GSUSJAM15