Ambra Trotto, Maria Claudia Coppola, and Caroline Hummels
The paper presents a mapping activity carried out in 2023 by a team of researchers from RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and the Eindhoven University of Technology (EIT) as part of an assignment from EIT Culture & Creativity. The mapping aimed to map design-driven Practices for Inclusive and Sustainable Societal Transformation.
It stems from the need, voiced by professionals in the field from various organisations, to better understand how to face complex systemic challenges in an inclusive and collaborative way, leveraging design and creative practices.
Building on the team’s design expertise rooted in the body of knowledge of Design for Transforming Practices, the mapping investigates the playfield of achieving a sustainable societal transformation, carving out what design practices are currently invited into it and how they are enacted through multi- and inter-disciplinary partnerships.
Given the complexity of the playing field, the mapping takes an iterative, participatory, and reflective stance, making space for participants’ plurality of approaches and questions, and fostering collective resonance. As a result, the mapping portrays a multi-layered landscape, exploring the values and qualities behind organisational and collaborative models that enable conditions for ecosystemic practices of transformation, leveraging culture and creativity to unfold.
This contributed to the co-formulation of recommendations for and from the sector. The recommendations address partners of the EIT Culture & Creativity, stakeholders working in the cultural and creative sector, and societal actors engaged in mission-driven innovation. They offer insights that facilitate access to available strategic design and creative expertise.
KEYWORDS: design for societal transformation, complex, complexity, interdependence, participatory processes, collective sensemaking, learning