Over the past few months, you may have heard some buzz about an exciting initiative that aims to improve lives and jobs.   That’s the big idea of the Fifth Space – embedding a different way of working with the disability sector. This way of working starts from the bottom-up, rather than in boardrooms, and is all about making, testing, and revising ideas for new services and systems.

For the past four months, 29 staff from across BACI, the Simon Fraser Society for Community Living and posAbilities have been coming together one day a week to work in small teams to address some incredibly real and big challenges — from boredom in group homes to intimacy and romantic relationships of the people we serve.

Teams have recently spent four weeks doing immersive research and challenging assumptions about what the perceived problems really are – from the perspective of the people experiencing them. The Fifth Space is also an experiment in and of itself: How do we enable staff to make the time and space to design more relevant services?

To get a taste of what this project is all about, check out this introductory video below:

Curious to learn more? Visit the Fifth Space website for more videos, their story blog and information about the 7 projects these teams are working on.

With only three months left to prototype this project (design, test and tweak), we are excited to see where our collaborative efforts will lead! We will keep you posted on the continuing work of the Fifth Space fellows as they continue their journey to create better services with the people who use them. Stay tuned!