Water security will top the agenda when Cape Town and 21 other cities around the world kick off the Ideas World Cup on Friday.
The five-hour brainstorming session at the V&A Waterfront aims to harness enough innovation and creativity to come up with 10‚000 ways to tackle Cape Town’s social and economic problems.
“We have come up with five key challenges facing our city‚ but people are welcome to give us ideas on anything. We’ve already had one submitted about rhino poaching‚” said digital marketing specialist Shelley Finch‚ who is spearheading the Cape Town event.
The five suggested brainstorming areas also include traffic congestion‚ shack fires‚ affordable city-centre housing and social entrepreneurship.
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Facilitators at tomorrow’s event‚ which starts at 1pm at the amphitheatre‚ will seek ideas from the audience‚ and volunteers will roam the V&A asking visitors to contribute ideas on slips of brightly coloured paper. Ideas can also be contributed online.
“Ideas World Cup is a celebration of creativity‚ and we will be using divergent and convergent thinking‚” said Finch.
“The divergent part is on Friday‚ when we will gather all the ideas with no discussion‚ no judgment. The convergent part happens afterwards when we have 20 students from UCT‚ UWC and the Square Kilometre Array who will sort them into themes.”
Once collated‚ the ideas will be discussed at a round-table event involving representatives from the City of Cape Town‚ the Cape Town Partnership‚ Future Cape Town and the South African Innovation Summit‚ among others.
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A Grade 7 class at Sea Point Primary School has been working with music therapist Dan Levin‚ who will be one of the facilitators on Friday‚ on ideas to address three topics they identified: cyber-bullying‚ rape and peer pressure.
The competitive aspect of the event is a race to see which city comes up with the most ideas. A screen at the event will display running totals from the 22 cities involved in the project‚ which originated with a creative facilitation company in Spain.
“Their research found that the qualities top CEOs are looking for more than any others are innovation and creative thinking‚” said Finch. “They started the Ideas World Cup to get ‘regular’ people excited.”
- TMG Digital/TimesLIVE
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