---

One podcast project I’ve recently enjoyed producing is Wicked Complex. It’s been a fascinating opportunity for me to learn how social innovation labs work – or how people have been trying to use them for everything from supporting Indigenous parents to building inclusive housing and climate solutions.

Wicked Complex is produced by Action Lab in Edmonton. The podcast delves into some of the most wicked and complex problems we face today, and the approaches that social innovation labs have used to work on them. Season 1 is a 3 part series centred around the Future of Labs Gathering in May 2024, where social innovation lab practitioners from around Canada and the world came together on Cortes Island in British Columbia to try and figure out what the next 10 years of lab practice might look like.

In episode 1, we talked to some of the gathering organizers, to try to find out what labs are capable of, where they stumble, and why they feel like labs in Canada are at a crossroads.

I spoke with Ben Weinlick (Executive Director of Skills Society), Geraldine Cahill (Director of Engagement with Social Innovation Canada) and Mark Cabaj (President of Here to There Consulting). In the second half of the episode, we learn how Winnipeg Boldness Project Director Diane Roussin is using labs to make sure Indigenous families have a voice in defining the problems they want to solve. You’ll also learn what she was hoping for on Cortes Island, from finding ways to build awareness of labs to paying attention to the island itself together.

---

For the second episode, I travelled to Cortes Island as kind of an embedded reporter with the dozens of folks who’d gathered in BC to think through this stuff together. It felt like I spoke to a million people, and I think it made for a pretty neat immersive documentary about cedar needles, composting old systems, trying to prototype new ones, finding the money to actually do this difficult work, and trying raw oysters on the beach.

Many participants lent their voices to this episode, including Rose Hanson, Brenda Hanson, Lewis Muirhead, Meghan Durieux, Rhea Kachroo, Roya Damabi, Mark Cabaj, Geraldine Cahill, Miquel de Paladella, Ben Weinlick, Sophia Ikura, Maryam Mohiuddin Ahmed and Annelies Tjebbes, Alex Ryan, Keren Perla, Aleeya Velji, Heather Remacle, Diane Roussin, Cheryl Rose, Darcy Riddell, Brent Wellsch, Rebecca McSheffery, Rebecca Rubuliak, Melanie Thomas, Sarah Lamb and Julia Dalman.

The Wicked Complex podcast is available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.