Wayfinding Through our Wellbeing Innovation Landscape
We envision a mental wellbeing sector that supports innovation on a variety of different levels, and which helps to grow successful initiatives, products, and services that improve wellbeing across all communities living in Aotearoa.
We embarked on a wayfinding journey to uncover the elements of this vision by listening and observing to the people involved in creating it. This required us to open our eyes, assess the conditions, adapt and learn as we chart our path forward.
We’ve learnt a lot, and as we get ready for a new year ahead, we want to share our direction with anyone who shares this kaupapa and wants to contribute.
Bringing light to connections and communities
Our journey so far has helped us reveal people, initiatives and innovative practices that are contributing to improved mental wellbeing across Aotearoa. All these people and their efforts need to be acknowledged, amplified, and celebrated.
Whakawhanaungatanga is central to the work that we do. We’re building strong relationships that support and encourage everyone involved. By taking the time to connect and understand the challenges faced by innovators as they work towards better mental wellbeing outcomes, we, and other system players will be better placed to provide effective support.
The best answers aren’t always found in new models or ideas, but in new ways of relating and connecting with one another
An important part of our journey is perspective. To broaden how we look at mental health and wellbeing, we’re actively stepping back from our default worldview, learning from and collaborating with a diverse range of people. We look beyond our mental health system as an isolated silo and are bringing sectors and expertise with intimate connections to wellbeing into this kaupapa.
Change is constant. We’ve experienced vast and rapid new challenges to our mental wellbeing over the last few years, and this will continue as our world changes around us. Our kaupapa requires creating the conditions for relationships and innovation to thrive, to adapt with these changes and meet the needs of people no matter where they are.
“Ki te kotahi te kakaho ka whati, ki te kapuia, e kore e whati
When we stand alone, we are vulnerable but together we are unbreakable ”
Nurturing these conditions and relationships, requires working with the diversity of communities across Aotearoa who are experiencing, or working in, the wellbeing space. Making these connections and relationships is central to our kaupapa.
Creating space to weave together a collective voice
The emergence of systems thinking has allowed a deeper appreciation for the complexity that underpins our society and wellbeing. Systems are complicated and interwoven. They don’t fit into tidy boxes. Our mental health system is no exception.
Systems thinking resonates strongly with how many indigenous cultures view and interact with the world. For example, Te Whare Tapa Wha demonstrates how our mental wellbeing is an inseparable part of a more holistic, interwoven system.
Visual depiction by Fern Grant of Te Whare Tapa Wha, a Māori mental health model developed by Sir Mason Durie.
We are excited by the power in weaving together cultural perspectives. We want to bridge connections between diverse cultural worldviews, in ways that allow people to be inspired, and connected, and importantly, to cultivate a stronger collective view of mental wellbeing.
“Working in the interspace involves navigating intermingling bodies of knowledge. The interspace is a space for people to inquire into their own experience and what’s alive in the moment, and go on their own journeys of discovery”
For wellbeing innovation, Aotearoa needs better connections between our digital and physical worlds, between modern and ancient wisdom, and between clinical and natural settings. As we explore this interspace between different world views we can uncover patterns that can lead to better, more effective wellbeing services.
Our kaupapa explores this intersection of knowledge, voices, and cultures to help us broaden our understanding of mental health and the relationships it has within all elements in our lives.
“Once we have a strong shared kaupapa, the tikanga will flow”
Shaping our role in the coming year, this is what you can expect from us
We look to the new year with optimism. Optimism for what new ways of working, new ways of relating, and new ways of supporting those who support others. We want to shift the conditions for mental wellbeing innovation to thrive, which, in turn, will create a greater diversity of interventions to boost our wellbeing outcomes.
We see our role in this kaupapa to advocate, challenge, support, and connect across the wellbeing innovation system.
Connection is our foundation. We’ll share the successes, the lessons, and the provocations from those who would otherwise rarely be heard: those not considered traditional mental wellbeing innovators, those from different world views, remote communities, different sectors. We’ll amplify the leading work from the Hui Ora summit, HeadFit Awards, and eMHIC. The more voices amplified, the greater chance Aotearoa has to build a strong, collective understanding of our wellbeing challenges and opportunities.
Not every aspect of wellbeing receives the attention it deserves. We will challenge stakeholders to bring together resource and energy to unmet needs, and through the design of innovation challenges work to remove critical barriers to innovation for that specific problem.
Our innovators require the support of an ecosystem. We’re testing how our system can better support innovation development. For example, how might we leverage existing players to build capacity and catalyse stronger impact measurement that supports, rather than stifles innovation?
All our learnings, and the voices of innovators, drive how we advocate for change. Innovators told us capital is too hard to secure—igniting our recent research into capital markets’ perspective of, and commitment to, investing in wellbeing initiatives. This research (to be published in the new year) will shine a light on opportunities to improve how our country proactively and sustainably invests proactively in our wellbeing.
“Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini.
Success is not the work of an individual, but the work of many ”
We are not on this journey alone, wayfinding requires support, reciprocity, collaboration, and long-term relationships. This is a movement. We share this journey with anyone who believes in this kaupapa, working towards an Aotearoa that better understand and responds to our mental wellbeing needs.
Our doors are open. If this kaupapa has sparked anything inside of you, we’d love to hear from you.