Tag: News

Creative Methods Toolkit published!

Published on by Julia Bentz

Creative Methods Toolkit For 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. 

New publication: Creative capacity building for early, mid-career and senior researchers

Published on by Julia Bentz

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

Open Access publication here

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. 

Collaborative book published: Tomorrow’s Odyssey – a time traveller’s guide to our shared futures

Published on by Julia Bentz

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.

 





Open Access to the book here




















			
		

	
	



			
				



			

			
				
			
		

	
	

		
		
Summer school “Urban Synergies: Co-creating thriving connections for humans with nature”

				

			Published on  by Julia Bentz		

			



			


			






How can we live and thrive together?





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.





Access Report with Full Programm here




















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





Photos: Mirella Frangella