Lawn bowls find the back of the net

An under-utilised asset. Check. An unmet community need. Check. A viable business opportunity. Check. Can’t you just smell the possibilities for social innovation?. Kikoff Soccer Centres has - the Sydney Morning Herald this week ran a story about the company turning old lawn bowling clubs into venues for other outdoor sports. It’s a potential wreck any community-builder can see several trains driving into at full speed. A lawn bowls club with a declining membership. It occupies prime real estate in the community. There’s political pressure to increase housing densities in many of the older suburbs where these clubs are located. Developers are circling. It’s ‘Crackerjack’ territory – but there’s usually no Mick Molloy. Meanwhile sporting teams are locked out of council-run sports fields because competition for hire is so intense. Councils can’t afford to buy and develop new facilities. And state planning policies often force them to approve the redevelopment of old bowling clubs for housing – even when they don't want to. Team sports are key indicators for the health of a community. They provide one of the few real opportunities for people to meet and develop friendships outside the circle of people they grow up or work with - people who are just like them. They’re rich with community-building possibilities. But times change. Sporting codes too. And often there’s a poor fit between the built form of the facilities in which one game is played and those needed by the codes which are replacing them in the popularity stakes. Too often the results are losers all around. The oldies die off and their club with them. The land gets sold. The youngsters looking for somewhere to kick a ball around end up staying home to play on their Wii. But not in Harbord and Riverwood, apparently, where Kikoff have struck deals with local bowling clubs to re-develop existing greens for the beautiful game’s equivalent of putt-putt golf – futsal. The deal gives Kikoff access to space and a venue and the clubs access to a vital new income stream. That’s where I think I can see the elements of a social innovation in this scenario. A couple of years back, David Hetherington of Per Capita wrote a paper, ‘Case Studies in Social Innovation’. He argued that all successful social innovations had four features in common. Firstly, they are focused on a specific unmet social need. Second, they involve the creative matching of assets and capabilities. Third, they demonstrate iterative development, rather than big-bang break-throughs. And finally, they have adaptive organisational forms. So by this count what Kikoff are doing in Harbord and Riverwood (and others are probably doing else-where in suburban Sydney) doesn't constitute a social innovation. They’re not disinterested. These developments are being driven by a commercial operator that has a profit motive at the heart of what they’re doing. But it does meet a specific unmet social need. The need for affordable open space for active recreation. And it’s a wonderfully creative matching of assets and capabilities. The space designed for one use is adapted to fit another – but the social purpose of the core asset remains unchanged. The commercial operator solves his own need for space while the community-based bowling club solves its own need for income. Local people are the winners. They get somewhere to play football. Open space is preserved where they live. The community-based clubs get the financial equivalent of the kiss-of-life and survive to fight another day. And all of these outcomes achieve the public policy goals of promoting physical activity and community engagement. Which is really what I call ‘finding the back of the net!’