REWORLDING · Reworlding: Repositioning Participatory Design to Tackle Socio-Environmental Challenges

Socio-environmental issues are experienced differently by different actors, communities and organisations, leading to societal polarisation and inhibiting urgently needed actions around these issues. As Participatory Design (PD) researchers, we observe a need for design approaches that can bring diverse actors together to tackle these challenges in participatory ways, with particular care for those who remain silent, both as human and non-human actors (e.g. plants, rivers or insects). REWORLDING doctoral network aims to investigate and outline such a careful and situated PD approach that can better understand and create synergies between the different worlds in which people live and work, and the non-human worlds they are entangled with. This is achieved through an interdisciplinary methodology based on collective learning and participatory action research, embedded in inter-sectoral collaborations with non-academic partners who address socio-environmental issues from diverse perspectives. In doing so, the network identifies and articulates reworlding design capabilities that can support next-generation researchers in tackling the connections of social and environmental challenges. Design capabilities link research and training in REWORLDING. The research program explores the capabilities needed to address socio-environmental issues and their translation to specific skills and training needs. Based on research insights, the training program iterates the proposed courses and enhances identified capabilities by exposing the 10 recruited researchers to non-academic socio-environmental practices. The program includes Retracing lecture series, Reconnecting methods training, Reimagining summer schools, Reinstitutioning webinars and Reworlding assemblies. Through articulated pathways to impact, we connect the project activities with stakeholders on different scales and relevant programs at European and international levels (such as SDGs and European Green Deal).