The Social Impact Lab Alberta

We are working toward creative & sustainable solutions in Athabasca!

We know that people in Athabasca want what’s best for their community and are ready to collaborate across sectors, social groups, and demographics to create a positive future for everyone. In April, we began conducting community interviews with residents of the Town & County to learn more about their successes, challenges, hopes, and vision for Athabasca, culminating in a 3-day community engagement trip to Athabasca to connect in-person, hear from more Athabascans, and host a community workshop. Based on everything we heard, we have identified 9 insights that reflect the different priorities and concerns we heard from the community.
You can read all about this work and our insights here.

On August 29 & 30, we hosted a 2-day workshop with community members to choose which of these insights to explore as the main topic of a Design Lab.

The insight selected is: 

“There is a perceived lack of accessible and affordable social supports for people. The community wants to see supports for people around mental health, housing, and transit.”

In The Athabasca Design Lab, we will use a human-centered design process to address this opportunity, from building empathy to producing new ideas that could benefit the community all the way to prototyping and then testing those ideas in Athabasca.

The Athabasca Design Lab sessions will be facilitated through 4 hour in-person or 2 hour online sessions on the third Thursday of the month (except for December, which will be earlier) from 9am-1pm or 9-11am. In-person meetings will include a catered lunch. The delivery format will be primarily in-person at Athabasca University, with a switch to online via Zoom during the coldest months. The timeline is as follows:

Interested in Learning More or Participating?

Contact Kelsey Brown, Project Designer
Phone: 403-441-2275
Email: Kelsey.Brown@thesocialimpactlab.com