Ambassador Program: Start From the Mess

The Banff Centre convened the inaugural Ambassadors Program from September 1 – 5, 2014. The intention of this pilot program was to enable innovators from a variety of fields to come together to explore experiential learning in order to inspire and facilitate creativity, collaboration and innovation in their industries. 

The week long leadership workshop was divided into two components. In the first half of the week, 20 community leaders with backgrounds that included a theatre director, a lawyer, a playwright, a scientist, a filmmaker, a DJ, an indigenous business-person, a PhD student, and many more gathered on campus. These ambassadors were facilitated by Simon Kavanaugh of Kaospilots, one of the most forward-thinking, outside-the-box business and design schools in the world, to break down their personal boundaries surrounding creativity and vision.

“The creative and cultural industries, Indigenous communities, social impact organizations and entrepreneurial start-ups are a hotbed of innovation and creativity in approaches to leadership,” says Jerry McGrath, The Banff Centre’s Director of Innovation and Partnerships.

The Banff Centre is known for bringing together smart, creative practitioners to reframe big issues and start crafting solutions.  “These individuals bring their diverse perspectives, experiences and backgrounds together to co-create new spaces and solutions for challenging social and organizational questions,” says McGrath.

Following this part of the program, the participants combined to tackle some more specific issues that affect their roles as co-creators from social, cultural, and entrepreneurial organizations. A group of clients arrived from Beakerhead, the Toronto Arts Council, the Association of School Business Officials, and an internal Lougheed Leadership project called Hope Decoded and the ambassadors were divided up and assigned to work with one of these partners for the remaining two and a half days. 

Jennie Winhall, one of our regular faculty members, facilitated a service design session, and each group was able to tackle the problem faced by the client and come to a tangible solution (after much hair-pulling and post-it notes). One ambassador referred to the outcome of this process, a board chock-full of post-it notes covered in ideas, as “post-it traumatic stress”!

For some first-hand impressions of the program, check out the following blogs by a couple of the ambassadors themselves:

Why the hell do we do things with others? by Francis Gosselin

Come, there is important work to do, and you are integral by Dianne Roussin