The key event on Social Innovation, the conference "Pathways to Social Change", was opened by the Minister of Labour, Social Affairs and Consumer Protection Rudolf Hundstorfer and other representatives of the city of Vienna, like Delegate of the City Council Tanja Wehsely and Matthias Reiter-Pazmandy of the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy.
The conference was organized as part of the 25-year-celebrations of Austria’s Zentrum für Soziale Innovation (ZSI) in cooperation with four ongoing EU-funded social innovation research projects (CRESSI, SI-Drive, TRANSIT and SIMPACT). It was planned and designed by these mutually complementary research projects on social innovation that reach out to world-wide experiences and concepts of social innovation. More than 430 people took part in the two-day-event, which focused on the state-of-the-art of conceptualizing and doing social innovation, methods and good practices to create desirable social change, resources, means and levers making social innovation processes effective as well as on the international comparison of social innovation practices, policies and research.
On behalf of the AIT Innovation Systems Department Susanne Giesecke and Klaus Kubeczko represented the CRESSI project and organized a session on “Life Cycles of Social Innovations” on the first day. CRESSI explores the economic underpinnings of social innovation with a particular focus on how policy and practice can enhance the lives of the most marginalized and disempowered citizens in society. The CRESSI project was also the context of the guided tour through the Goethehof in Vienna-Kaisermühlen on the second day, initiated by Susanne Giesecke. She combined her scientific research finding of an in-depth case study of 100 years of social housing in the city of Vienna with tan architectural visualization of this historic landmark of the Red Vienna era.
30.11.2015