innovating at Brenderup Folk High School

After three days of putting the SDGs into some context, the UNLEASH participants were transported from Copenhagen to the Danish countryside. This was the meat of the trip: we were going to find solutions, break barriers, and work with people from all over the world. Idealistic, I know... what could we do in four days out in the countryside, right?

But the UNLEASH organisers knew what they were doing. I ended up in Brenderup Folk High School, on a different Danish island, with some of the Food theme participants. In here, we were guided throughout the innovations lab process by Deloitte and several UNLEASH facilitators and subject matter experts.  

The first thing on the agenda was defining the problem, putting it in a proper frame, and finding like-minded people who would like to tackle the same issue. In my case, I wanted to deal with consumer choice and food security. Through a process of self-organisation, I found myself working with Rafael (Spain, conflict resolution), Mikhail (Canada, agriculture sustainability), Sibel (Lebanon, nutrition), Gabi (Brazil, food sustainability), and Stephanie (USA, food sustainability). It's the most diverse team I've been on so far because we brought different expertise onto the table. It was, at the same time, a high-performing team because the excitement and the energy of the group started off really well. 

For the next few days, we challenged assumptions and refined our problem frame (we reached six iterations while in Brenderup) into something that we could solve. After all, food security is such a large topic that we need to narrow our focus down. There were points in which my team had differences in opinions that bogged us all down but that's when Rafael really shone. He was the glue that kept everyone together at the logical level when emotions ran high. Stephanie brought in her business savvy in full force, calculating how much investment we need to have to get this project running in real life. Mikhail was fearless, exploring avant-garde means of getting our project noticed both by our subject matter experts during our presentations to them and by our peers during our pitches. Gabi's passion for sustainable consumption and her design acumen helped in developing the objectives and the branding for our proposed solution. She basically established the visuals of the project and found its heart. Sibel's strength in research and in presentation skills allowed our team to have the scientific basis of our nutritional proposal and the structure it needed for presentations.

Me?

I got labelled the mother hen of the group. I accepted the title because I'm older than they are and I was trying to keep everyone at pace with our required deliverables. I started developing the first draft of our business plan and doing the necessary literature surveys for defining our problem frame so that they could concentrate on developing our solution and its prototype. I knew that we'd be bogged at an impasse at some point and I wanted to have a major chunk of our business plan in place before that happened. Oh... I also was the team's first hostile audience because I asked hard questions throughout the innovations process before we went onstage to present to the rest of the groups in Brenderup. 

It wasn't all work in Brenderup though. All work and no play makes UNLEASH participants antsy. So our facilitators made sure that there were group activities peppered throughout the day. For instance, we start the day the traditional Danish way in school: with group singing. We were singing out of a hymns book, just like I used to do in grade school! It was so much fun because of the nostalgia for me and because it fostered a sense of camaraderie among us UNLEASH participants.

In the afternoons, our facilitators brought us out into the garden for games. On one occasion, they brought out boxes upon boxes of Legos for us to play with! They said that building blocks can help with creativity and that we were free to take as much of these Legos home with us. I couldn't bring any home because my luggage was bursting at the seams already... too bad. On another occasion, we were made to play a game so similar to Dr Quack Quack that I had a good laugh seeing everyone in a long contorted chain that has to be disentangled through teamwork.

On our last night at Brenderup, the facilitators had an open mic. Anyone who wanted to present their talents were welcomed on stage. People who brought munchies from their home countries were invited to share them with the rest of the group. I brought over four packets of dried mangoes (munching on two packets' worth helped me survive the absence of rice in the folk high school during my stay) and people who tasted them found them delicious.

We also had STOMP out in the garden that night. A master conductor came over and organised us into an orchestra of improvised percussion instruments. I took a medium-sized pail while others had shakers, big drums, and small pots. It was raining so I was so happy that I was already wearing my raincoat. As we gained mastery of the beat that the conductor wanted us to perform, out came the fire dancers! I'm not sure if we were playing a traditional Danish percussion piece but I felt like I was in the middle of a Vikings traditional dance program. It was so good... reminds me of my days with the UPLB Ethnomusemblia... also as a percussionist.

Our facilitators showed us a few of their pet projects in the school. Two of them are on sustainable construction materials such as those used to build the "Strawberry House" (we don't know how it's connected to strawberries) and a house that's still in construction beside it. As they gave us the tour, I wondered how something like this could be adapted to the Philippines using local materials. I'm not aware if architects at home are embracing the sustainability mantra yet.

At the end of the innovations lab, we had to say good bye to some of our subject matter experts and members of the Deloitte team. In the short time that I've been in Brenderup, I became friends with them. I hope that I'd meet them again someday. 

I'm going to miss the school as well. After all, I've made good memories here with the rest of my team... yes, even if I wasn't with them when they went to the beach or to their late night parties (I was asleep by 10pm). After my Brenderup experience, I thought that I'm going to send my future kids for a summer there (take note for the future husband). Being surrounded by people from different cultures and backgrounds make people mature and provide life lessons that academic institutions don't provide and I believe that kids should be exposed to this in their early lives.