Innovation Expo 2023
On 10-11 September 2023 Smart Cities Christchurch hosted an Innovation Expo at Te Pae. Ako Ōtautahi was well represented at this event and our participation continued to grow our connections and influence towards our vision.
All our whānau volunteered their time, supported by our newly appointed Community and Engagement Manager, Sam, who works for 25 hours per week. This is a new position to help lift the load from trustees and get things moving.
Our exhibition area was set up as an ecosystem, representing our three areas of Ako Ōtautahi focus: Learning Days, Digital Equity and Learning Futures.
The Digital Equity ecosystem also included representatives from Digital Equity Coalition Aotearoa, Māori and Pasifika tech and Digital Waitaha.
Our aim was to grow awareness of Ako Ōtautahi and its mahi but also to engage in as many conversations as possible about our areas of focus. We used the time to add to our mapping of connections and to explore how we might continue to work collaboratively for better learning outcome towards equity, access and innovation. Some of the detail around each focus are can be found on the following pages.
The next step is to use this feedback to move all three areas forward and to re-develop our website to clearly articulate our work and to share positive stories of success from across our network:
Digital Equity
Leads: Elle Archer (Waitaha Regional Digital Equity a project through Ako Ōtautahi), Josh Hough (Tātai Aho Rau Core Education), Bronwyn Hayward (Digital Futures Aotearoa).
During the two days the team gathering information from the public regarding digital equity needs and concerns. They also hosted a youth podcast and also interviewed people regarding their experiences. The team hosted several panel conversations in the auditorium, including one on digital wellbeing and safety run by youth.
Several booklets on Digital Wellbeing and Safety were also freely available to the public. Neysa Koizumi (Digital Waitaha), who is part of our Waitaha Regional Digital Equity group had developed these with support from AO-LCC and DECA. One of these was for adults and the other for students up to year 10. This booklet had been developed for youth by youth. There is a need for another print run! A third booklet for senior students is under development and we hope to be able to support it.
Feedback from one of the team:
“Over the two days of the expo there were many, many excellent conversations about digital equity. We had panels and talks that kicked off awesome kōrero, rangatahi buzzing as they made podcasts on all things digital equity, parents and whānau learning and sharing, community leaders showing support for the kaupapa, kids playing, kids-at-heart playing, other exhibitors coming over to join the kōrero, and connections, laughter, sharing and calls to action happening left, right and centre.”
Learning Days
Leads: Cheryl Doig and Erica Austin (Ako Ōtautahi).
The display advertised Learning Days and the dates for 2024, May 13 – 19. Our focus for the 2024 year is in on gamification, play, curiosity and creativity. This theme was decided on at our celebration of the 2023 event. We asked the public to contribute ideas connecting to the theme. Ideas included activating malls for play, indigenous gaming and a city wide learning journey. These will now be explored in more depth and the theme finalised in the next week.
We were able to talk to other exhibiting groups about our Learning Days and have some new organisations interested in contributing to our week. Our connections always focus on equity, access and innovation.
Our learning days aim to be free, with events ideally being run in community, by community for community.
Learning Futures
Leads: Cheryl Doig and Robin Staples
Learning Futures is an emerging area of interest and one that we want to develop further. It arises from the conversations we are hearing regarding uncertainty and the lack of preparedness for the future. Over the next year we will be developing some prototypes to explore how learning futures might contribute to equity, access and innovation.
During the expo we encouraged people to fill in a postcard from the future, from their descendants to the citizens of today. We will continue to develop these and look for key themes that may focus our work in this space.
One immediate outcome was the establishment of a small group of youth (just in their last year of high school) who are interested in setting up a youth futures roopu to learn some of the elements of futures thinking. This could enable them and other young people to contribute to ongoing needs of young people.
As an aside, three of our adult team also attended an online training session on Intergenerational Fairness with the School of International Futures (SOIF) and will be continuing to explore what this means for greater ChCh and Aotearoa. There is a whole framework on Intergenerational Fairness to tap in to and a whole process available for organisations to review policies and systems against.