Social innovation in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic

The INSIST Cahier 4 will review COVID-19 related dynamics from the lens of social innovation, as addressed above, and assess various aspects of life and experiences faced by different countries around the globe. These dynamics will be summarised along several sub-questions to answer our general question: To what extent has the COVID-19 pandemic affected aspects of human life on at various scales? What happened to existing inequalities? And to what extent and how have socially innovative responses been triggered by multiple parties (governments, private parties, communities)? Specifically, the purpose of INSIST Cahier 4 is to produce an initial compilation of knowledge and analysis of COVID-19 related social innovations around the globe. This collective knowledge will enrich public discourse about dealing with the ongoing pandemic, which involves multiple agents--governments, communities, business, local, regional, national and international actors. In each of these themes, the existence of the Coronavirus in our future lives forced socially innovative initiatives, expanding our resources, thinking out of the box to find new ways and instruments to adjust this situation into a better future. Based on this compilation of knowledge, a number of recommendations are formulated in terms of a manifesto. This study is written from various perspectives and covers quite diverse sectors, with varied writing styles: academic pieces, artistic interpretations, and graphical representations linking to existing material. Contributors are 32 young academics, researchers and students, participating from the beginning of March until the end of May 2020 in the intensive programme “International Module in Spatial Development Planning (IMSDP)” in Leuven (Belgium), supported by VLIR-UOS. They all have respective fields of study, and come from almost all continents: Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin-America. Therefore, the analysis presented varies and provides a kaleidoscopic understanding of the COVID-19's impacts and socially innovative responses from different perspectives. The writing and discussing process ran intensively for six weeks, exclusively through online meetings and collaboration, and was followed by 3 weeks of post-processing. All contributors were actively involved from the beginning in a bottom-linked writing process. They generally used data sourced from digital media, both in the form of news and various reports available, as well as primary data through observations/interviews/questionnaires. The framework that unites the diversity of writing is the pandemic implications through the lens of social innovation. Hopefully, these writings will give colour to the analysis presented.