At the Taylor Center, we believe the skills and mindsets of social innovation are valuable for people from all backgrounds to learn and apply throughout their lives and work. We define changemakers broadly as “people who use their skills, expertise, gifts, and power in a way that creates positive social change,” recognizing that we all have a role to play in shaping a more just and equitable world. Our scholars embrace a full spectrum of social innovation models that draw from many different theoretical and practical traditions (Murphy, Schoop, Faughnan, and Flattley, 2021). We welcome diverse values and approaches to change making that can contribute to transformative systems change.

Our social innovation education can help participants and teams:

• Understand complex issues from multiple perspectives
• Explore diverse strategies and pathways to systems change
• Act in a way that aligns with their values, leverages their unique strengths and demonstrates awareness of their relationship within the system
• Build relationships with a supportive network of place-based changemakers to enhance their learning and impact

We see change as inherently relational, political, contextual, and complex. We embed this understanding in our approach to social innovation by aiming to build shared power, foster mutual support, and engage in collective action that challenges dominant paradigms and transforms unjust systems. We use a place-based, systems-informed, and equity-centered lens to analyze complex social and environmental issues and co-design adaptive change strategies. Furthermore, we encourage a broad understanding of “social change” that looks beyond human-centric notions of progress, which have often led to land and labor exploitation. Instead, we invite learners to consider the well-being and balance of the planet and all its inhabitants. Ultimately, we aim to nurture a diverse and interconnected network of place-based changemakers in New Orleans and beyond who can work together across differences to address our most pressing challenges and bring about a more regenerative, collective, and liberatory world.

While we welcome diverse perspectives from the field, our approach to social innovation education and scholarship draws significantly from critical and ecological schools of thought. These frameworks acknowledge the complexity of social change and emphasize empowerment (Manzini, 2014; Moulaert and MacCallum, 2019; Mulgan, 2019; Murphy, Schoop, Faughnan, and Flattley, 2021; Pel et al., 2020). In this view, social innovation is understood as a relational process, constructed through social interactions and shaped by historical context. It taps into the social capacity of interconnected networks to produce innovations that enhance society’s capacity to act collectively (Manzini, 2014; Moulaert and MacCallum, 2019; Mulgan, 2019). The individual agency plays a vital but insufficient role in this model. Change emerges through multiple, co-existing pathways rather than a single, linear trajectory or revolutionary shift (Pel et al., 2020).