Community Innovation Council Summit - Simcoe Muskoka

If Canada seeks to build a stronger, more resilient economy, we need to mobilize it in the communities and places we call home. This was a key theme from this year’s Victoria Forum and a call to action in Social Innovation Canada’s latest discussion paper, .

Over the past several years, the Future of Belonging project has gathered community-based insights about belonging, wellbeing, participation and the future of our region from the lens of equity-owed groups. At the same time, Georgian College and its partners—the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka and Social Innovation Canada—have been designing and testing the architecture for a Community Innovation Network; an interconnected network of spaces, programming, tools and resources designed to help turn community insights and ideas into responses to some of our toughest challenges.

Now we want to explore what comes next.

On November 10, 2026, Social Innovation at Georgian College invites you to join the inaugural Community Innovation Council Summit at the Barrie Public Library.

This is not intended to be a traditional gathering.

It is a working gathering bringing together people from across sectors to explore how we might strengthen the infrastructure for community-led innovation, collective foresight and uncommon collaboration across our region.

Some participants will take part in StratCon, where we will test Common Ground, an experimental strategic gameplay experience designed to make community research and lived experience more accessible for strategic planning, partnerships, policy and decision-making.

Others will explore how the Community Innovation Network model can be adapted in different communities and how the infrastructure needed for community innovation might be funded and sustained through applied research in colleges.

There will also be workshops, informal conversations, networking and an opportunity to learn more about the Community Impact Labs space at the Barrie Public Library and around the region.

We will bring these different conversations back together around one question:

What might stewardship of the this network look like under a Community Innovation Council?

Together, we will explore how a Council might help steward Simcoe Muskoka’s Community Innovation Network and better connect place-led knowledge, relationships, resources and strategic planning around the future of our communities.

We are looking for a mix of people who would not always find themselves in the same room: community and non-profit leaders, municipalities, researchers and educators, funders, economic and community development organizations, health and human services, libraries and youth leaders, Indigenous, Black, 2SLGBTQIA+ and other equity-deserving communities, entrepreneurs, business and industry, policymakers, advocates, and people working in systems change.

You don’t need to be an expert in social innovation. Come with your experience of this region, your questions, and a willingness to work with people you might not normally work with.

The Summit is both a gathering and an experiment.

We are not arriving with a finished model for a Community Innovation Council. The Summit is an invitation to explore it together.

Participants will help us consider what a Council could become, who needs to be part of it, how the Community Innovation Network might be stewarded, and what our region needs to better support community-led innovation.

For those interested in continuing the work beyond November 10, the day will also include an invitation to help shape the next stage of the Community Innovation Council.

Come prepared to participate. Come prepared to play. Come prepared to help shape what comes next.

The Community Innovation Council Summit is hosted by Social Innovation at Georgian College at the Barrie Public Library, with special guests from Social Innovation Canada.

The Summit builds on Future of Belonging research undertaken with the YMCA of Simcoe/Muskoka and the ongoing development of the Community Innovation Network.

This work is supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) through the College and Community Social Innovation Fund (CCSIF).

Info: Join us for coffee, meet participants from across the region and connect with people working across community, research, funding, policy, education and social innovation.

Info: Welcome to the first Community Innovation Council Summit. We’ll introduce the purpose of the day, the questions we are bringing into the room and our invitation to participants: to learn, experiment and help shape what comes next.

Info: Gwen Joy, Interim CEO of Social Innovation Canada, will open the day with a national perspective on place-led innovation and the growing movement toward building community resilience from the ground up.

She'll then bring the conversation home to Simcoe Muskoka, sharing how the model built in Simcoe Muskoka for a Community Innovation Network is what Canada needs. Her talk will speak to how social innovation ecosystem can ensure progressive ideas have what they need to 'punch-up' towards the policy and decision making levels, how unconventional funding can support this, and how organizing community wealth in new ways can unlock resources, influence and dollars towards inclusive innovation.

Info: What happens to community research, data collections and insights after the report is written? The Georgian College Social Innovation Team will provide an update on the wrap of the The Future of Belonging Project, what we we learned and how we are using this community offered data to build the programming, design and activities happening inside the Community Impact Labs. We'll also look at how community decision makers can 'play' with these insights to explore and experiment new ways of creating future-fit institutions and communities.

Info: Participants choose between two working streams: experience StratCon through Common Ground, or explore how to use the Community Innovation Network for research, developing partnerships and creating funded programming.

Info: A chance to continue conversations, meet people outside your sector and explore potential uncommon collaborations.

Info: SHIFT - Participants continue their selected stream, moving from exploration toward reflection, application and what could happen next.

Info: We’ll bring the streams back together around the central question of the Summit: what would it take for our region to steward this work together, long term?

Participants will work with insights generated throughout the day and from previous community co-design to explore the purpose, participation and possible governance of a future Community Innovation Council. The session will conclude with an invitation to form a working advisory group to continue designing what the Council could become.

Info: Strategic planning, but probably not as you know it.

Participants will play Common Ground, an experimental serious game that turns insights from our Future of Belonging project and research into a shared space for strategy. Players will navigate competing priorities, resources, relationships and community needs while exploring what changes when organizations move from working independently toward uncommon collaboration.

The goal is not to “win” or produce a finished strategic plan. It is to make assumptions visible, encounter perspectives beyond our own and generate new questions and possibilities for planning together.

Info: The learning happens in the debrief from play, and how we will take it back to our work afterwards.

Following the game play, participants will unpack what happened: where collaboration became difficult, what resources or relationships changed the possibilities available, whose needs shaped decisions and what the experience might tell us about real-world planning.

We’ll also explore how insights generated through Common Ground could travel back into organizations, partnerships and strategic planning processes.

Info: Join us with special guests - Durham College's Social Impact Hub to explore 'what is a Community Innovation Network' how to regional actors can collaborate with their local college using the model to support inclusive innovation. How regions that launch Community Innovation Networks can support community safety, well-being and prosperity. The workshop portion will ask participants to explore what becomes possible when we mobilize uncommon community assets, think beyond individual projects, networks and program grants asking how we resource the longer-term infrastructure that allows community-led innovation to move from talk to action.

Info: Building on the morning conversation, participants will work in small groups to learn how to leverage resources of the Community Innovation Network for novel collaborations around funding or financing applications.

Event venue & nearby stays

Barrie Public Library - Downtown, 60 Worsley Street, Barrie, Canada

Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.

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