Throughout this course, you will be engaging with working on wicked sustainability transition challenges, these are complex societal sustainability problems that do not have specific problem owners but that heavily impact our collective futures. To help you navigate these terrains, this Expedition Guide will host various practices and reflective exercises that will help you document your explorations over the next 20 weeks. These serve as reflective inspiration for you to create as an autoethnographic journal that will strengthen your experiences during this course as it unfolds. We designed this guide in a way that hopefully encourages you to nurture your regenerative leadership - your ability to guide collective learning-based change beyond wicked sustainability problems. By observing critically, asking **better questions,** and taking charge of your own stories.
Our goal is to create a learning environment that will help you develop your **regenerative leadership -** defined as your ability to guide collective learning-based change towards more sustainable futures. That means that in tandem with the group research, you will also be engaging with your ability **to work with change by examining your own beliefs, assumptions, and approaches. This expedition guide has been designed consciously to help you grow into this role and aid you in this journey of transformation. There are two different key components to be aware of: the content-related exercises (ie. week 2), and reflection exercises (ie. week 3).
The content-related exercises consist mainly of practices that apply the concepts, theories, and research you encounter through methods we believe will be helpful for your team as you tackle a transition challenge. These include Creative Research Methods, how to design and host workshops, mapping and analyzing data, and translating your insights through design practices.
The reflection exercises focus more on your personal experiences, capture your thoughts, feelings, and uncertainties, and open up a continuous conversation with yourself. We believe that developing your reflexivity will better prepare us to work with situations that are complex, uncertain, and dynamic - something you will encounter often in the minor (and outside of it) as we collectively transform within planetary boundaries. To develop this capacity you will be introduced and invited to play meaningfully with a variety of media, to develop your skills as a creative worldbuilding being.
Writing down your thoughts and feelings in an academic context can feel like an unusual exercise (especially if you haven't done it before). Therefore, within these reflection exercises, the steps will be broken down to ease you into the process. In pursuit of more regenerative and sustainable futures, we must first understand where we are in terms of our beliefs, values, and assumptions of the world. The best way to do this is to engage in dialogues that allow us to share openly and honestly about the things we perceive to be true. We are aware that at times, this may be confronting; interacting with feelings of uncertainty and discomfort is something we will continuously explore and provide support to each other throughout the minor. Just remember that there are no right answers. :)
We live, breathe, and are stories. In fact, some literary scholars call us homo narrare or the storytelling animal. Through stories, we share our hopes, our learning, our lessons and allow society to continue and advance. Through stories, we develop our empathy and are able to relate to others, across time and space. Through stories, we make sense of our experiences, our feelings, and our emotions. The practice of design can be seen as an applied form of storytelling, or storymaking, of futures that have yet to emerge but have the possibility to. If, like a seed in a garden, these stories are nurtured and cared for. The practice of design makes these stories come to life and allows others to relate more strongly to emergence possibility. Throughout this course, you will practice your storytelling and story-making abilities.
For a good introduction to storytelling watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1rMnzNZkIX0
