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Institute For Social Inventions
{{short description, Think tank for improving quality of life The Institute for Social Inventions was a think tank set up in 1985 to publicise and launch good ideas for improving the quality of life. Its founder Nicholas Albery (1948–2001) sought to promote non-technological innovations. History The Institute emerged from the informal network of Social centers and Info-services which spread around in London throughout the 1970s. One of the earliests of these centers was BIT Information Service, founded in 1968 by John "Hoppy" Hopkins. Inception It was during his years as coordinator of BIT that Nicholas Albery came out with the idea of an Institute who would promote all kinds of ideas and experimentations, developed mainly inside what has been called the "Alternative Society". Main idea The institute has been known by different names, such as "Institute for Social Innovations", or "Institute for Social Change". All these denominations revolved around the concept of new impr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Think Tank
A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmental organizations, but some are semi-autonomous agencies within government or are associated with particular political parties, businesses or the military. Think-tank funding often includes a combination of donations from very wealthy people and those not so wealthy, with many also accepting government grants. Think tanks publish articles and studies, and even draft legislation on particular matters of policy or society. This information is then used by governments, businesses, media organizations, social movements or other interest groups. Think tanks range from those associated with highly academic or scholarly activities to those that are overtly ideological and pushing for particular policies, with a wide range among them in terms of th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nicholas Albery
Nicholas Bronson Albery (28 July 1948 – 3 June 2001) was a British social inventor and author, was the instigator or coordinator of a variety of projects aimed at an improvement to society, often known as the alternative society. Early life and education Albery was born at Bricket House, St Albans, Hertfordshire, son of the theatre impresario Sir Donald Albery (son of Sir Bronson Albery, also a theatre impresario) and his second wife, Cicely, daughter of Army officer Reginald Harvey Henderson Boys. While a student at St John's College, Oxford, Albery became involved with psychedelic and spiritual movements in San Francisco and dropped out of college. After a period in Haight Ashbury he returned to the UK and joined the anti-university in London. Life BIT He became involved with the newly started BIT Information Service, quickly becoming a driving force in the development of wider activities for BIT so that it became one of the first social centres. Around 1972/73, at the pea ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Network
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for analyzing the structure of whole social entities as well as a variety of theories explaining the patterns observed in these structures. The study of these structures uses social network analysis to identify local and global patterns, locate influential entities, and examine network dynamics. Social networks and the analysis of them is an inherently interdisciplinary academic field which emerged from social psychology, sociology, statistics, and graph theory. Georg Simmel authored early structural theories in sociology emphasizing the dynamics of triads and "web of group affiliations". Jacob Moreno is credited with developing the first sociograms in the 1930s to study interpersonal relationships. These approaches were mathematically formalize ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Center
Community centres, community centers, or community halls are public locations where members of a community tend to gather for group activities, social support, public information, and other purposes. They may sometimes be open for the whole community or for a specialized group within the greater community. Community centres can be religious in nature, such as Christian, Islamic, or Jewish community centres, or can be secular, such as youth clubs. Uses The community centres are usually used for: * Celebrations, * Public meetings of the citizens on various issues, * Organising meetings(where politicians or other official leaders come to meet the citizens and ask for their opinions, support or votes ("election campaigning" in democracies, other kinds of requests in non-democracies), * Volunteer activities, * Organising parties, weddings, * Organising local non-government activities, * Passes on and retells local history,etc. Organization and ownership Around the world (and s ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BIT (infoshop)
BIT was an information service, publisher, travel guide and social centre founded, in 1968, by John "Hoppy" Hopkins. It pre-dated the Internet as a free service that would try to find any information asked for, but post-dated library reference desks, and derived its name from the smallest unit of computer information. BIT BIT was initially a partial spin-off from Hoppy's earlier ''International Times'' information service, which was being overwhelmed by the number of enquiries it was receiving, then subsequently took on a life of its own, becoming a much wider organisation more akin to the later social centres. Emerging from the UK underground as a volunteer-run business, it evolved into a collective and open house based in Notting Hill above the Badge Boutique. Although often undefinable, one staff member tried with "We're open every day of the year from 10am to 10pm (telephone 24 hours) and we give free help and information about anything to anyone who wants it. Dirty, untidy of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
John "Hoppy" Hopkins
John Victor Lindsay "Hoppy" Hopkins (15 August 1937 – 30 January 2015) was a British photographer, journalist, researcher and political activist, and "one of the best-known underground figures of 'Swinging London' " in the late 1960s. Life Hopkins was born on 15 August 1937 in Slough. In 1958, Hopkins graduated from Emmanuel College, Cambridge, which he had entered on a scholarship in 1955, with a degree in physics and mathematics, and began to work as a laboratory technician at the Atomic Energy Research Establishment at Harwell, Oxfordshire. When Hopkins took a trip to Moscow to attend a Communist youth festival, his security clearance was revoked. Hopkins then re-located to London at the beginning of 1960, and began to work as a photographer for newspapers and music magazines including ''Jazz News'', ''The Guardian'', ''Melody Maker'' and ''Peace News''. Hopkins photographed many of the leading musicians of the period, including The Beatles and the Rolling Stones ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Institute
An institute is an organisational body created for a certain purpose. They are often research organisations (research institutes) created to do research on specific topics, or can also be a professional body. In some countries, institutes can be part of a university or other institutions of higher education, either as a group of departments or an autonomous educational institution without a traditional university status such as a "university institute" (see Institute of Technology). In some countries, such as South Korea and India, private schools are sometimes referred to as institutes, and in Spain, secondary schools are referred to as institutes. Historically, in some countries institutes were educational units imparting vocational training and often incorporating libraries, also known as mechanics' institutes. The word "institute" comes from a Latin word ''institutum'' meaning "facility" or "habit"; from ''instituere'' meaning "build", "create", "raise" or "educate". ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alternative Society
A counterculture is a culture whose values and norms of behavior differ substantially from those of mainstream society, sometimes diametrically opposed to mainstream cultural mores.Eric Donald Hirsch. ''The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy''. Houghton Mifflin. . (1993) p. 419. "Members of a cultural protest that began in the U.S. In the 1960s and Europe before fading in the 1970s... fundamentally a cultural rather than a political protest." A countercultural movement expresses the ethos and aspirations of a specific population during a well-defined era. When oppositional forces reach critical mass, countercultures can trigger dramatic cultural changes. Prominent examples of countercultures in the Western world include the Levellers (1645–1650), Bohemianism (1850–1910), the more fragmentary counterculture of the Beat Generation (1944–1964), followed by the globalized counterculture of the 1960s (1964–1974). Definition and characteristics John Milton Yinger originated the t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Innovation
Social innovations are new social practices that aim to meet social needs in a better way than the existing solutions,Howaldt, J./ Schwarz, M"Social Innovation: Concepts, research fields and international trends" IMO international monitoring, 2010. resulting from - for example - working conditions, education, community development or health. These ideas are created with the goal of extending and strengthening civil society. Social innovation includes the social ''processes'' of innovation, such as open source methods and techniques and also the innovations which have a social purpose—like activism, virtual volunteering, microcredit, or distance learning. There are many definitions of social innovation, however, they usually include the broad criteria about social objectives, social interaction between actors or actor diversity, social outputs, and innovativeness (The innovation should be at least ”new” to the beneficiaries it targets, but it does not have to be new to the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Change
Social change is the alteration of the social order of a society which may include changes in social institutions, social behaviours or social relations. Definition Social change may not refer to the notion of social progress or sociocultural evolution, the philosophical idea that society moves forward by evolutionary means. It may refer to a paradigmatic change in the socio-economic structure, for instance the transition from feudalism to capitalism, or hypothetical future transition to some form of post-capitalism. Social development refers to how people develop social and emotional skills across the lifespan, with particular attention to childhood and adolescence. Healthy social development allows us to form positive relationships with family, friends, teachers, and other people in our lives. Accordingly, it may also refer to social revolution, such as the Socialist revolution presented in Marxism, or to other social movements, such as women's suffrage or the civil ri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Global Ideas Bank
The Global Ideas Bank's origins lie in the Institute for Social Inventions, which was set up in 1985 by Nicholas Albery, social inventor and visionary. From small beginnings (a network of inventors, a quarterly newsletter), the Institute grew into a full-fledged organisation under his leadership: producing an annual compendium, running social inventions workshops and promoting creative solutions around the world. It was part of the first European Social Innovations Exchange. In 2001, the institute was awarded a Margaret Mead Special Recognition Award for "community creativity for a new century" In 1995, the Global Ideas Bank (originally suggested by an American correspondent, Gregory Wright) was first established online, and has since become the name for the entire project's work. Through the work of several volunteer programmers and technical wizards (especially Flemming Funch of the New Civilization Network), new features were added: online submission, voting systems, categorisati ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ideas Bank
An ideas bank is a widely available shared resource, usually a website, where people post, exchange, discuss, and polish new ideas. Some ideas banks are used to develop new inventions or technologies. Many corporations have installed internal ideas banks to gather the input from their employees and improve their Ideation (idea generation), ideation process. Some ideas banks employ a voting system to estimate an idea's value. In some cases, ideas banks can be more humor-oriented than their serious counterparts. Many ideas banks are provided as free of charge, or set around certain companies in general to work out new inventions. Although ideas are provided by a community of people, problems can arise when people take the ideas from the site and begin developing them. There is no possible way to prove that the idea on the ideas bank was original and not taken from something else. Innovation The front end of innovation is quite distinct from the remainder of the innovation proces ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
