Creative Methods ToolkitFor Imagining, Designing and Teaching Regenerative Futures
Imagining, designing and teaching regenerative futures is challenging. Educators often lack approaches that allow them to address the complexities of global challenges through new narratives, which make space for the imagination of desirable futures. Commonly in education, we retell the story of an apocalyptic future when speaking about global challenges such as biodiversity degradation and climate change. This narrative, which focuses on the risks and dangers of global environmental change, is built on the assumption that the induced fear might lead to action.
This toolkit introduces a broad variety of creative and arts-based methods for regeneration and transformation that can be used in various educational settings. It harnesses the power of creative and arts-based practices, which are increasingly seen as a means of expanding future imaginaries and supporting the development of new scenarios of transformative change.
The toolkit was developed within the COST Action SHiFT – Social Sciences and Humanities for social transformation and climate change as an initiative of Working Group 3: Creative Practices and Outreach. It comprises a selection of 68 creative methods brought together in a collaborative effort by 124 authors from 31 countries and 6 continents. Its intention is to comprise a valuable resource for educators, teachers, lecturers, community workers, and change-makers who are aiming to empower their learners while providing competencies in regenerative design, climate action, futures thinking, human-nature connection, wellbeing and community engagement.
Designed with user-friendliness in mind, it facilitates navigating among different methods easily through tags and tables, supporting researchers and educators to identify suitable methods and tools for their specific context. It comprises a resource for researchers, educators, lecturers, community workers, and change-makers in the broadest sense, who wish to foster competencies in the areas of regenerative design, climate action, trans-formative research and sustainability education.
The “Creative Methods Toolkit” is designed as a complementary resource to the Book “Imagining, Designing and Teaching Regenerative Futures – Experiences from around the world” (Bentz, J. & Ristic Trajkovic, J. (Eds.) forthcoming). It introduces a wide range of methods for educational purposes, related to community engagement, regenerative futures, wellbeing, innovation, and transformative learning.
The art-science lab “(Re)imagining Regenerative Futures: How will we live together well?” invited early career researchersto share their imagination and interpretation of regenerative futures. Taking place on June 14 and 15, 2024, in Venice, Italy, it brought together young creatives and early career researchers from diverse backgrounds, demonstrating the transformative power of imagination and art to foster regeneration.
Applications for the lab consisted in the submission of a photo and narrative illustrating creative responsesto how we can (re)create our futures together. At the art-science lab participants engaged in interactive workshops connecting their creative works to universal values and co-creating a common narrative from the individual works.
This process fostered a deep respect for multiple voices, allowing diverse perspectives to flourish and contribute to a richer, more multifaceted outcome. The Lab encouraged transcending disciplinary boundaries and adopting a holistic approach to building a regenerative future.
This publication features a digital catalogue and exhibition showcasing:
• Shortlisted individual photographs and accompanying narratives, offering unique views from different parts of Europe and the world.
• The collaborative artwork and activities resulting from the Lab’s interactive sessions.
• The reflections from the Lab’s interactive sessions.
The living lab Wisdom and Research Practice invited mid- career and senior researchers who are weaving wisdom into their current research practices. It addressed the questions of how we can co-create holistic practices and ways of engaging with the complexities of current social-ecological challenges. It welcomed researchers from all disciplines that share the vision of a thriving and regenerative future through a holistic and transdisciplinary lens. While formal and explicit knowledge play a key active role in advancing current research, informal and alternative ways of knowing need to play an equally important role by nourishing and guiding research and actions towards a meaningful and regenerative future for all. Embracing them together, they become an interplay of active doing and receptive being. Informal and alternative ways of knowing imbue wisdom through observations, sensing, connecting, reflections, embodiment, creativity and imaginations. This way of being can help shaping and guiding the many diverse ways of doing in art, music, dance, communications, planning, governance, social work, design, architecture, engineering, biology, ecology, quantum physics, agriculture, technology.
The living lab Wisdom and Research Practice took place on 26-27 August 2024 in Basel, Switzerland at the castle Burg Reichenstein and the University of Applied Sciences, Muttenz. Through interactive sessions, workshops and a field trip, this living lab aimed to integrate different perspectives on wisdom and (future) research practice by holding space for open sharing, mutual learning and creative approaches.
The expectations placed on sustainability researchers are very high. They are asked to deepen scientific knowledge while also fostering practical solutions and transformative change towards more regenerative ways of living. This dual responsibility can be very challenging given that the complexities associated with promoting sustained change on personal, political and systemic levels are difficult to address in most contexts. The field of sustainability transformation and regenerative futures is a quickly growing field in research and practice. It is evolving more and more into an inter and transdisciplinary field integrating many different disciplinary knowledges and other ways of knowing. Researchers are asked to collaborate across disciplines and lines of difference and bring together diverse parts of society to achieve shared understanding and collaborative action towards regeneration. Still, many institutions fail to provide continuous learning and training opportunities on transdisciplinary approaches and capacity building for researchers in the different career stages. Yet continuously developing one’s skills and competencies can be essential for academic success, personal growth, and a deep sense of meaning.
Capacity building in a changing world
Capacity building for researchers working in the fields of global social-environmental challenges, including sustainability and regeneration, needs to ac- knowledge the complexities of their research settings. It may involve providing a broad palette of competencies and inspirations. Apart from developing skills in research methodologies, technical tools, and communication, it also needs to in- volve innovative, creative, and interdisciplinary approaches that can inspire new perspectives and ideas to address such complex problems. In addition, such capacity building needs to be tailored to the specific needs, challenges, and goals that researchers have at different stages of their career.
This publication features the capacity building activities developed and promoted by Working Group 3 of the shift Cost Action, in the first two years of the Action, 2023-2024
COST Action Shift – Social Sciences and Humanities for Transformation and Climate Resilience aims to deepen our under- standing of practices involved in ‘doing transformation’ and to explore the role of transdisciplinary Social Sciences and Humanities in these emerging and evolving spaces. It fosters creative, future-oriented and tangible solutions to address the challenge of accelerating change in an inclusive and responsible manner. SHiFT brings together researchers and practitioners from different disciplines creating spaces for transdisciplinary networks and research in order to harness the potential of engaging with transformation and regeneration across different social, political, economic and environmental contexts.
Working Group 3—Creative 09 Practices, Arts and Outreach is led by Julia Bentz and Jelena Ristić Trajković. This working group is dedicated to exploring the arts outside conventional parameters of communication and outreach through traditional exhibitions and displays, but as a generator for knowledge production, climate action, and regenerative change.
Have you ever wondered how cities will adapt to climate change and related challenges? Do your imaginings take a dystopian or utopian view? How do you imagine a city that you would LOVE to live in?
This book is meant to take you on a journey – an odyssey. It is an invitation to reflect, explore and reimagine the city through different lenses. Cities are tapestries of culture, science, art, history, diversity and innovation. At the same time, cities are hotspots of resource consumption, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, cities often are pioneers of more sustainable and equitable ways of living, while addressing air pollution, waste, mobility, housing and climate in a far more effective way than countries or provinces. For the world to thrive, cities are likely to be drivers of change towards regenerative living and being. They were once the birth of civilization. How can they be testing grounds for innovating and reimagining the urban space? What might a regenerative city look like and feel like? How do we harness the creative potential of cities to achieve regenerative futures for our planet?
This book is coauthored by the participants of the international summer school on “Urban Imaginary – Exploring our urban futures” and highlights the creative co-learning process, or odyssey, of the event. Hosted under COST action SHiFT – Social Sciences and Humanities for Transformation and Climate Resilience, the 5-day course took place in the National Museum of Science and Natural History and the Botanical Garden of Lisbon, Portugal, 3-7 July 2023. The summer school was conceptualized as a learning space that engaged cognitive and embodied knowledge and that nurtured both body and mind in a simultaneous and synergistic way. With a total of 48 trainers and participants of diverse disciplinary backgrounds coming from 20 countries (Europe and elsewhere), the summer school applied a transdisciplinary approach that allowed the trainers and participants to navigate between the many polarities, contradictions, and challenges around life in cities and to explore new, regenerative imaginaries of the future.
The summer school “Urban Synergies: Co-creating thriving connections for humans with nature” was a five-day event, taking place in Berlin 15-19 July 2024 involving young people from Europe and beyond. It centered around the challenging questions: How can we live and thrive together? How can we not only overcome polarities but nurture diversity and dignity for all? How can cities not only adapt to climate change but restore and regenerate relationships with nature, resources and with communities around us?
Cultural and technological transformations that define modern life have pulled us away from our fundamental connection with nature and each other in ways that are unhealthy for people and the planet. This is particularly true within cities, where urban alienation and disconnection from natural systems are especially pronounced. Today, more than half the world’s population lives in cities, and more than two-thirds will live in urban areas by 2050. As rapid urbanization and ecosystem dysfunction (e.g., climate change; biodiversity loss) accelerate, we ask, how can we begin to reimagine urban life in ways that restore our connections to one another, our communities, and to the natural systems within which we are embedded? Moreover, since cities are places of deep, visible, and longstanding material andsocial inequities, how can we envision urban futures in ways that recognize, address, and transcend historic injustices to build more just, equitable alternatives?
The chosen approach to the city was an evolving and potentially transformative journey. It involved creative, embodied, and transdisciplinary approaches to learning about current challenges and injustices, drawing new linkages, and to designing change. This summer school invited participants to reimagine conviviality and community-building in the city through a transdisciplinary lens.
The goal was to provide participants with theoretical and practical knowledge of transdisciplinarity, transformation and regeneration in urban spaces. The chosen approach integrated arts-based, design-driven and experiential learning practices with theoretical knowledge. The summer school offered a space to explore how to navigate between perceived polarities and seeming contradictions to create new, regenerative imaginaries of the future. Taking place in the vibrant neighborhood of Schillerkiez, Neukölln, the summer school provided participants with opportunities for experiential learning through field visits and creative experiments. The summer school was conceptualized as a transdisciplinary learning space. It offered a balanced program of lectures, interactive sessions and experiential field trips in Berlin provided by experienced and internationally renowned trainers and researchers.
The summer school was an activity of the Cost Action SHIFT which studies the contribution of the Social Sciences, Humanities and the Arts to sustainability transformations and climate resilience. Organized by the Working Group 3, this summer school explored the potential of transdisciplinary, art- science approaches in addressing the complexities in urban spaces, drawing new linkages and designing connections that shape regenerative and thriving urban environments. Moving beyond disciplinary approaches to environmental challenges, this summer school integrated holistic, transdisciplinary approaches and created spaces for imagining and co-creating just, livable, healthy futures that foster a sense of belonging and kinship.
Organisers and facilitators: Julia Bentz, Kiat Ng, Jelena Ristic Trajkovic
Have you ever wondered how cities will adapt to climate change and related challenges? Do your imaginings take a dystopian or utopian view? How do you imagine a city that you would LOVE to live in?
Cities are tapestries of culture, science, art, history, diversity and innovation. At the same time, cities are hotspots of resource consumption, air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, cities often are pioneers of more sustainable and equitable ways of living, while addressing air pollution, waste, mobility, housing and climate in a far more effective way than countries or provinces. For the world to thrive, cities are likely to be drivers of change towards regenerative living and being. They were once the birth of civilization. How can they be testing grounds for innovating and reimagining the urban space? What might a regenerative city look like and feel like? How do we harness the creative potential of cities to achieve regenerative futures for our planet?
Starting in January 2023 I led the conceptualisation and organisation of a transdisciplinary summer school on urban futures. The core idea was to invite participants to reflect, explore and reimagine the city through different lenses.
The International summer school “Urban Imaginary – Exploring our urban futures”, hosted under COST action SHiFT – Social Sciences and Humanities for Transformation and Climate Resilience, was a 5-day course that took place in the National Museum of Science and Natural History and the Botanical Garden of Lisbon, Portugal, 3-7 July 2023. The summer school was conceptualized as a learning space that engaged cognitive and embodied knowledge and that nurtured both body and mind in a simultaneous and synergistic way. With a total of 48 trainers and participants of diverse disciplinary backgrounds coming from 20 countries (Europe and elsewhere), the summer school applied a transdisciplinary approach that allowed the trainers and participants to navigate between the many polarities, contradictions, and challenges around life in cities and to explore new, regenerative imaginaries of the future.
The summer school involved theoretical lectures, interactive sessions, and guided tours and integrated embodied and experiential learning sessions throughout the course. The lectures, as well as the embodied parts of the program, were following and informing the overall theme of URBAN IMAGINARIES with the aim to offer alternative perspectives and inspire participants. The chosen transdisciplinary art-science approach aimed to provide learners with a felt experience and conceptual understanding of transdisciplinarity and how to explore a real-world problem through a holistic approach.
The summer school program involved creative exploratory methods such as futures thinking and emerging concepts, including kinship with the non-human world and nature-based solutions. It provided spaces to learn and explore urban futures through the senses as the senses offer a way to tap into embodied knowledge. To ground imaginations in spatial reality as well as bring forth practical future visions, time travelers were guided through Lisbon city focusing on auditory, visual, or taste and smell senses.
To tap into embodied knowledge and body wisdom, every morning, the course started with an embodiment session in the Botanical Garden. Participants were invited to engage in movement exercises informed by Interplay, a play-based, dance-based movement practice. Beginning with exercises, such as walking, stopping, and running, becoming aware of the space around oneself, each day the movement exercises became more complex. A hand dance and individual movements grew into a group dance on behalf of a poem. With each day participants became more expressive in their movements, in tune and connected with other participants and the natural elements, seemingly moving more and more together as a whole.
On the last day, participants presented their regenerative urban design proposals for different locations in Lisbon in groups. The presentations involved performances, storytelling, poems, design approaches and visual art and centered around the principles and values of kincentric futures, wellbeing, care, community, utopias, transformation and heritage. Coming from very diverse backgrounds in terms of disciplines and geographical background the participants had brought different forms of knowledge and experience to their working groups.
This book shows how creative methods involving stories and art can help educators to address the challenging topics of climate change and peace via new channels that inspire their learners and underline the role of each individual, with their specific talents and worldviews, in engaging with the crucial questions of this generation. Where climate change and human conflict meet, there is a particular potential for approaches beyond language and traditional classroom methods to offer students new channels of engagement. This book explains the reasons behind this and offers examples of such new channels in an inspirational resource for educators.
This book has been a project very close to my heart that has given me great joy during the development and writing process. It is a guide for educators and everyone who wants to learn more about creative approaches to climate change and peace education. It is a hopeful book, cultivating the kind of learning that can prepare us to be hopeful climate and social justice educators and activists
This book is the result of collective efforts. I want to acknowledge the work of the the editors Marte Skaara and Wendy Anne Kopisch; the storytellers Janna Articus, Michael Chew, Burcu Eke Schneider, Dimitrios Gkotzos, Marina Kalashyan, Anna Malavisi, Munir Moosa Sadruddin, Aditi Pathak and Stefanie Vochatzer; the artists Anirudh Kadav, Burcu Koleli, Carolina Altavilla, Luise Hesse, Hazim Asif, Neethi and Harutyun Tamaghyan; and the graphic designer Stefanie Bendfeldt. Thank you all so much for a lovely collaboration
Learn more about how to undo the colonial relations at the root of the climate crisis through deep listening, self-reflexivity, creating space, and being in action.
Climate change is both a form and product of colonization. To co-create sustainable futures, we must work to undo the colonial relations at the root of climate change. As those benefiting from colonial relationships, white people have a distinct responsibility to contribute toward building ‘right relations’ with Indigenous people.
We offer an entry-point for how non-Indigenous folks, and especially white people, can engage actively in decolonization. Embodying ‘right relations’ is an active and long-term commitment to decolonize yourself and the world. This work is therefore a continuous process of becoming with no end point.
“‘Right relations’ draws on the Indigenous notion of ‘all my relations’ and is a way of being that is grounded in respectful reciprocity with all of creation.”
While the idea of ‘right relations’ comes from Indigenous thinking and activism, these ways of being are relevant to all relationships, not least with other groups that are often marginalized, such as Black people and People of Color.
About the authors and their reserach: Irmelin Gram-Hanssen, Nicole Schafenacker & Julia Bentz, a group of non-Indigenous sustainability researchers working with Indigenous communities across the northwestern parts of Turtle Island (Alaska, British Columbia and Alberta). They offer four ways to create ‘right relations’ based on their open-access article “Decolonizing transformations through ‘right relations’” published in the journal Sustainability Science. This research and outreach is part of the AdaptationCONNECTS project, funded by the Research Council of Norway (Project 250434)
About the artist: Theda Mimilaki (@theda_mimilaki) is an illustrator living in Athens, Greece. She loves drawing humans and animals in natural and surreal environments. Theda values respect for nature, diversity and all beings.
Engaging actively in decolonization
Embodying ‘right relations’ both involves the ‘inner work’ of deep listening and self-reflexivity, as well as the ‘outer work’ of creating space and being in action to actively contribute to the dismantling of colonial systems and relations.
1 Deep Listening
Embodying ‘right relations’ means repairing colonial relationships. Deep listening and present, felt, engagement are being called for as practices to build capacity for ‘right relations’.
‘Non-actions’ of bearing witness and listening deeply make space for Indigenous voices to be centered and for the weight of their experiences to truly be received by the listener.
Deep listening is different from active listening in that it goes beyond listening to the words spoken; it enters into an engagement with Indigenous paradigms, and ways of knowing and understanding the world, in a meaningful effort to think, feel, and act differently.
Rather than attempting to evaluate and translate Indigenous paradigms based on Western understandings of knowledge, an alternative is to truly relate to and learn from them. Deep listening can provide a means of doing so.
2 Self-reflexivity
It is necessary to confront and disrupt mythologies of colonial benevolence and to meaningfully engage as listeners willing to be affected by the truth-telling of Indigenous peoples, Paulette Regan asserts in her book “Unsettling the Settler Within” about Indian Residential Schools, Truth Telling, and Reconciliation in Canada. This involves critically reflecting on Euro-Western hierarchical belief systems, including the emphasis on individualism.
Being reflexive about which stories we tell individually and as a culture can also be a response to the call for accountability. The act of telling or receiving a story can extend itself into fostering new enactments and ways of being. When coupling deep listening with self-reflexivity, stories can inspire action.
3 Creating Space
Creating space is not only about making room for Indigenous voices in one’s own work, but rather using one’s position to create space for the people behind the stories and voices to step forward.
Often the labor of raising awareness about marginalization and oppression falls on those who are experiencing it. Therefore, amplifying the voices and stories of marginalized peoples, as well as the particular knowledge systems underpinning them, can be one way of creating space and engaging in right relations — recognizing that making space for others implies giving up some of the space we currently hold.
In a more collaborative vein, space can also be created through transcultural learning via art, story and activism where Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples can share knowledge and imaginaries of a decolonized reality. Related to this, the act of sharing a story itself is a means of creating space.
By centering and amplifying Indigenous voices and acknowledging Indigenous language and metaphors we open ourselves to deeper knowledge of our world and contribute toward dismantling the current colonial relations.
4. Being in action
By responding to the call for members of the dominant group to educate ourselves on structural injustice produced by colonization we open space for personal agency in helping to enact decolonial change. Non-Indigenous people may work to embody ‘right relations’ by fostering relationships within our communities that allow for healthier connections, generative dialogue and teaching/learning practices on inequity and systematic oppressions so that we may collectively work towards a decolonized humanity.
Practices such as land stewardship and the experiential learning of frontline activism are ways of being in action. Many traditional territories across Turtle Island have become sites of decolonial activism in the face of extractive industry. The act of bearing witness to a struggle or more directly, placing one’s body within sites of struggle in solidarity, may enact change on a material level.
These sites have the potential to become spaces where ‘right relations’ are formed and decolonial ways of creating community can begin to be enacted, however imperfectly. In short, presence matters in affecting transformative change.
As many Indigenous scholars and knowledge holders have asserted, decolonization is not just a perspective or a metaphor that informs theory, but is deeply unsettling and requires an active repair of ‘right relations’.
Other writing on decolonization and Indigenization
The disempowerment of First North American Native Peoples and empowerment through their writing in gatherings by Armstrong J (1990) in the En’Owkin journal of first North American peoples, 1:141–147
Over the last two years I led the Edition of a Special Feature of the journal Sustainability Science on “The ‘How’ of Transformation – Integrated Approaches to Sustainability“! This Special Feature was first envisioned at an international symposium organized by the AdaptationConnects University of Oslo research project in 2019. In it, the editors and the authors provide diverse and integrative perspectives on how to move beyond “blah blah blah” and work deliberately to generate transformation.
The editorial of this Special Feature entitled “Beyond the blah blah blah: exploring the how of transformation” (Bentz et al. 2022) gives an overview on the 15 articles of this Special Feature and argues for integrative approaches to sustainability transformations that integrate both the means and the manner of transformation.
ART FOR ADAPTATION 
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