SystemsPlay was a global-South collaborative dedicated to building systems mindsets and practices that will address persistent wicked problems. After the Bertha Centre’s first project in Social Systems Innovation we led a design-lab intended to answer the question of how to continue to support the network that was the fellowship programme’s alumni. The design lab was made up of a diverse representation of systems academics, practitioners and activists from both the global North and the global South. This lab would see systems play.

The collaborative consisted of three regional hubs: Africa (Bertha Centre in Cape Town), Asia (New Delhi), and Latin America(São Paulo) and an online hub which, among other things, was the home for knowledge generation and assets.

Each regional hub was engaged in hands-on projects and has a specific programmatic focus; and all the hubs worked together in knowledge generation and management, enabling systems innovators, and building the network.

The purpose of the online hub was to curate and create simple (but not simplistic) resources - and which were not readily available on other platforms - for use by systems innovators. The resources are also intended to support the growth and development of the global collaborative. The thinking is that as a result, a greater diversity of change makers will have access to systems innovation concepts and tools (e.g. through translation) and global south systems practises and knowledge generation will be incorporated into the existing body of theory and practice.

The collaborative joins an established and evolving global movement to work in a more systemic and integrated way to address both social and ecological issues in the interconnected way in which these issues arise. SystemsPlay brings the following additionality:

• Translations of systems knowledge and tools - into Hindi, Portuguese, Spanish, French, isiXhosa, and Swahili;
• Working on field projects in the global south to both address specific issues and to collect and share global South generated knowledge and practices in systems innovation.
• Working to surface global South systems thinking and tools to inform the currently global North-dominated body of knowledge in systems innovation.
• Working to curate existing knowledge and add value by translating into simple (but not simplistic) easily usable formats.
• Mapping systems innovators in Latin America (beginning in Brazil), Asia (beginning in India), and Africa (beginning in South Africa) in our online map to surface them, connect them, and support them with systems innovation resources and capacity building.

Read more here.