Social Innovation Awards
Honor Global Creativity

Participatory creativity and coordinated global brain-storming were the themes of the 1995 Social Innovation Awards, presented by the London-based Institute for Social Inventions.

The grand prize of 1,000 English pounds went to the Los Angeles-based New Civilization Network, which contains the Global Ideas Bank, an Internet site to which online readers submit ideas, proposals and reports on successful projects.

So far some 1,000 projects and concepts have been deposited in the bank (see Internet address in listings below), an extension of Brain/Mind researcher Gregory Wright's proposal for a global suggestion box (see Brain/Mind, October 1992).

Other winners included Britain's Cafe Society for its plan to create a nationwide network of discussion cafes and I-Power Seminars of Connecticut for its "Come to the Meeting with Three Ideas" program. the Emory University-based Bank of New Ideas, described as "the electronic equivalent of Plato's Academy," also was honored.

Europe appears to be the world's current hotbed for collaborative creative thinking and social transformation. At a meeting in Germany earlier this year, representatives of the ISI, the Netherlands Institute for Social Innovation, the Swedish Institute for Social Inventions, Ecoconcern of Spain and various other organizations joined to form an umbrella group, the European Social Innovations Exchange Programme.

A cornucopia of proposals for world betterment appear in a new ISI book, Best Ideas: A Compendium of Social Innovations. Among the 244 general topics covered in the volume are health and therapy, science and technology and spirituality.

Best Ideas is available for 17 pounds postpaid from ISI, 20 Heber Road,
London NW2 6AA: (44) 181-208-2853.

Electronic addresses of interest to Brain/Mind readers:

Global Ideas Bank

Institute for Social Inventions

New Civilization Network

Creativity Cafe: New School for the Next Millennium

Mind Tools and Problem-Solving Web Page

Medical Answers to Any Health Query

21st Century Project: New Directions for Government Science and Technology Policy

The Women's Web

Online Political Participation Project

Institute for Global Communications' Progressive Directory

The EnviroWeb: Resources, Marketplace and News

Select Non-Profit Organizations on the Internet

Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility

More non-profits

(Reprint, Brain/Mind, August, 1995)

Copyright © 1996. The Light Party.