SAPC Communication Strategy
Towards a Festival of Dangerous Ideas
"The greatest challenge to any thinker is communicating* the problem in a way that will allow a solution"
(Bertrand Russell *almost)
SAPC is committed to improving health and primary health care through scholarship. Our work embraces the four elements of scholarship: making new discoveries, applying new ideas in practice, integrating perspectives and inspiring change through teaching. At the heart of each of these activities, and the goal of improvement, is effective communication.
Essential elements of scholarship are creativity, critical review, and dissemination. For SAPC, this means encouraging and providing opportunities for critical, creative, shared conversations.
We have been actively reviewing our whole approach to communication: how the Society communicates with members, and how we encourage conversations between members of the primary care community. We have re-designed and upgraded the website; launched the new Primary Health Care Research and Development Hot Topics pages; and in 2012 will be publishing our updated newsletter format, aiming to encourage conversations within, and out with, the organisation.
We are now turning our attention to the Conference. Conferences are a great opportunity to present our work and get a quick update on what is going on. Conferences provide a ‘festival for ideas’: stimulating new conversations and new thoughts as well as critiques of existing ideas.
But recognition of the need to adapt to a changing scientific, academic and consumer world is driving significant changes in the world of medical journalism. The need to maintain the scientific credibility of debate while not letting the science stifle new creative ideas poses a challenge for us all.
Our response in 2012 is to seek to create a Festival of Dangerous Ideas. We draw inspiration from the model started at the Sydney Opera House and St James Ethics Centre which brings speakers together to raise “important questions…as a catalyst for sharp and vibrant discussion”. And seek to launch our approach at this year’s Annual Scientific Meeting.
We propose that a Dangerous Idea is something which challenges, but also demonstrates a commitment to action… to making a difference.We want this critical, creative way of thinking to be a theme throughout this year’s Conference, and indeed a thread which runs through the Society’s approach to communicating ideas.
So in 2012, the Conference will encourage critical, creative scholarship in the way we invite people to tell their stories: encouraging a different type of story telling, as well as the telling of different stories. Both scholarship, and a Festival of Dangerous Ideas require that ideas be communicated and disseminated. An idea is not dangerous if it stays in one person’s head. So we have revised our submission process, and also introduced a new Festival of Dangerous Ideas soapbox.
We will continue to post details of our developing Communications Strategy on this page. And we welcome feedback and comments on our efforts.
Communications Strategy Group
January 2012
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