From Fragmentation to Coherence: Innovation and Community Resilience

10-11.06.2027 at McGill Univerity in Montreal

Call for Workshop and Panel Proposals

Communities across Canada face increasingly complex challenges that cut across sectors, jurisdictions, and traditional policy domains. While innovative solutions and initiatives continue to emerge, many remain disconnected from one another, limiting their collective impact.

For its fifth edition, the Canadian Forum for Social Innovation will explore how greater coherence can be built across institutions, sectors, policies, knowledge systems, and community initiatives to strengthen resilience and enable lasting systemic change. Building on the Forum’s tradition of deliberative dialogue and collective sense-making, we invite proposals for interactive workshops and panel discussions that move beyond diagnosis to support greater alignment, coordination and collective action.

We welcome proposals addressing themes such as:

Building coherent local and regional innovation ecosystems
The role of mission-oriented innovation policy in resilience and prosperity
Community resilience in the face of economic, social, environmental, or demographic change
Cross-sector collaboration and collective impact
Indigenous leadership and community-led innovation
Social finance and innovative financing models
Place-based approaches to development and regeneration
Knowledge mobilization and innovation intelligence
Bridging policy, research, practice, and lived experience
Governance models for systems change
Strengthening social infrastructure and the capacity for innovation in the social sector

Session Formats

Workshops (60 minutes) Interactive sessions designed to engage participants in dialogue, problem-solving, strategy development, or collaborative learning.

Panels (60 minutes) Curated conversations that bring together diverse perspectives on key challenges, emerging practices, and opportunities for action.

Selection Criteria

Proposals will be assessed based on:

Relevance to the conference theme
Potential to generate actionable insights or partnerships
Diversity of perspectives and sectors represented
Contribution to strengthening community resilience and ecosystem coherence

We particularly encourage submissions that showcase collaborative initiatives involving community organizations, governments, researchers, funders, Indigenous organizations, social enterprises, and citizens.