BY: ATLAS
The chairs in the basement lounge of the Centre for Social Innovation’s Annex location don’t match. Not a single couch in the rustic, exposed-brick space looks like its neighbour, nor do any of the worn wooden tables share the same shape. So, when Adil Dhalla, the centre’s director of culture, tells me to look at the furniture around us, he’s not trying to sell me something; he’s making a point. “We are the antithesis of a homogeneous environment,” he says. “What we celebrate and relish is diversity.”
That applies to the people in those seats, too. If I were to ask, I’d probably discover a non-profit founder, an artist, a community-organizing activist, a writer, and a disenchanted former bank employee littered around the space. What brings them together is a common cause: to make the world a better place.
That’s the only prerequisite to becoming a member of the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI), a curated coworking community that consists of four locations and 750 member organizations. The people behind the ever-expanding decade-old project, including Dhalla, believe that these movers and shakers—who might otherwise be stuck working in libraries, coffee shops, and cramped apartments—are better when they’re put together.
Read the full article here: The Centre for Social Innovation
