Swarm Live & Unplugged
Swarm Live and Swarm Unplugged are programmes designed to tackle challenges and gnarly problems in a rapid, collaborative and iterative way.
We work with a lead organisation to identify and frame a problem and then bring a diverse stakeholder team together along with useful external experts to provide wider collective intelligence and cultural perspectives to the challenge.
The approach rapidly shifts into prototyping concepts and solutions, before sense-making, testing, adapting and developing ideas.
Swarm Unplugged is a powerful experiential learning journey for an organisation or team. As well as building capacity and new ways of working, the process itself is iterative, creates strong content, builds real community and develops authentic communication assets.
Building ‘fixer brands’ and in some cases starting collaborative ventures and hatching movements – it’s a perfect approach to experiment with new ways of engaging customers through fixing things that really matter.
Recent Unplugged projects include RSA Remake and Spring Incubator with Nike Foundation and DFID
Swarm Live is our largest program and one that is deliberately open to the public and wider stakeholders.
It is centred around a big challenge or gnarly problem that an organisation &/or society is facing where the solution cannot be developed in isolation i.e. where it is recognised that any solution requires collaboration across a range of participants who work around the challenge.
The approach is similar to a Swarm Unplugged however participation is open and the project is live and transparent – meaning diverse networks and community build around the project as it evolves.
There are 3 main ways Swarm Live can be activated:
1. A lead organisation hosts and funds it, inviting others to participate.
2. A small group of organisations co-host and fund it, still inviting others in.
3. Swarm host and fund it, independently seeking funding from grant-makers/philanthropists and inviting participation from key players in the sector and individuals from cross-sectors.
Recent Swarm Live projects include Open Labs, Break the Silence and The Wild Network.