Converging and persistent global crises and problems, such as climate change, the COVID pandemic, and widening social inequality, resonate with the growing consensus that business-as-usual is insufficient for keeping our planet healthy and worth living. The need for change is visible and tangible more than ever. A growing number of people, companies and institutions want to create and contribute to a drastic shift. Design is increasingly oriented toward transformative aims, facilitating radical and ongoing change, and achieving transformational success by shaping new roles, new organisations, new services and experiences, systems and policies. Creating desirable and sustainable behavioural changes in individuals, communities, and organisations, and contributing to a more sustainable and equitable society through design solutions to make a positive difference in the world. But how to create and participate in transformational processes by which new social structures, institutions, cultures and practices are established from breaking down the old ones?

It’s really time we find alternative development pathways. In 2007, Derk Loorbach published the book 'Transition Management: New Mode of Governance for Sustainable Development’ on the complexity of tackling societal problems with existing approaches. One of the ways forward? Combining long-term vision and short-term experiments in a selective participatory process that supports policy integration, social learning, and social innovation.

In this end-the-year talk and discussion, Derk will explain the concept of transitions and how it has developed over the past decades. He will explain how this perspective can help identify the patterns and mechanisms of systems’ changes in society and why we are so far failing to achieve sustainable development. Consequently, Derk will provide a transition perspective to get a grip on the complexity and uncertainty of this era of transformative change and suggest a way forward: from research by design to development by design. To make possible what is possible. Improvise yet continue to play. Redesign, disrupt and transition. He invites you, designers and researchers, thinkers and doers, to join the discussion and get started with transition practices to collectively develop imaginative and institutional designs for a people- and planet-positive future. Join this session, listen, discuss, and share ideas to actually set transitions in motion!

The talk will happen live via Zoom.