Project Focus

Teaming with ‘Insights to action’ specialists Foresight Lane, we established an online forum to provide a rich vein of responses from young people to drive the Crazy Ideas College initiative further.We all benefit when young people contribute to civic life. Crazy Ideas College (CIC) is a program that supports young people to develop and introduce crazy good ideas for improving life in their communities. Over the course of five weeks, young people learn about community issues, create ideas and pitch them to local leaders and decision makers. OurSay enabled teams to build support for their ideas and gather feedback on how they might improve their concepts.

Ideation

Provoking Thinking

The CIC experience of Southern Grampians Shire, working with GenR8 Change and Freeza Youth Services, is a potent example of this. Heads turned. Eye-brows raised. Minds opened. Free flowing ideas fired up all those involved to take their thinking to an all

The Hamilton community has little way of expressing itself to visitors who are just passing by and the visitors have little way of seeing the raw feelings and expressions of the town. Our response to this is to build an expression wall. This idea is crazy good because it is something unique to the town and young people can express themselves without vandalism, this encourages the town’s already great emphasis on the arts.

Claire Schultz

CIC Student

Full circle integration

This went way beyond a conventional response collection and online engagement exercise. It was a key driver in the refinement of ideas throughout the five-week course. This culminated in young people and local leaders from across the region gathering together at the Hamilton Performing Arts Centre to pitch their ideas and win prizes. The freshness of the ideas opening up new possibilities for communities was impressive; with many being seriously explored to become new realities.

Telling truths

  • The program generated and refined 33 refreshing and robust ideas.
  • people from all sections of the community attended the pitch event.
  • Young people from across Southern Grampians Shire secured around 2000 votes from community members for these ideas.
  • A number of schools have used CIC as a means to engage their students in coming up with school improvement projects.
  • ideas are presently under evaluation for possible implementation.

Ownership & outcomes

There’s no doubt Crazy Ideas College helped connect the creativity of young people with the leaders, influencers, movers and shakers of the shire. It awakened the entire community to new possibilities, uniting groups and bringing hot issues into focus. Most significantly, lasting and diverse friendships were made, as young people bonded together to openly bringing their fresh take on their communities to life.

 

“It’s an excellent thing to do. It engaged”

We want to hold a festival twice a year to raise funds for the homeless whilst bringing the community together. The festival will be alcohol-free. The festival will include a fun run, outdoor cinema, rides, live music and other activities. We need an event like this in Hamilton to bring the community together for fun activities whilst supporting the less fortunate.

Ella, Georgie, Jess, Jemma, Ellie, Chella & Emily

Monivae Students