My co-creation approach combines the best of two worlds: Participatory Action-Research (PAR), and Transdisciplinary (TD) Sustainability Science.
My approach is an “eclectic bricolage” of different approaches and methods, with thoughtful and intentional design at its core.
Whether co-creative processes are meant for data collection, for education, for community building, or for organizational leadership, there are key questions that always inspire my work:
Why are we doing this? What needs are we serving?
I follow a purpose-driven and needs-based approach, inspired by Design Thinking.
Who and what is invisible, apparently marginal, and deserves a voice?
I believe in deviance (not dominance) as one source of transformative change; I try to practice justice (intraspecies; gender; intragenerational; etc.) through the methods I design and the spaces I host, inspired by feminist radical epistemologies.
What’s already there? And what gives life?
I use an appreciative stance, building from existing assets and resources, rather than gaps, following Appreciative Inquiry.
What will work in that particular moment, with specific beings, in a specific place and space?
My work is embedded and situated. The knowledge created is not abstracted from the context and its people; methods and aesthetics embed and evoke material and affective elements of the place; food (when there) is locally and responsibly sourced; local and anecdotal knowledge is valued.
What will make the process effective and impactful, as well as engaging and enriching?
No learning (and thus no co-creation) can be truly effective if it is only based on rational ways of knowing, and on flat, low-energy discussions.
That’s why we need visual, experiential, and arts-based methods. And rituals. And genuine conviviality.
Yet, we also need analytical tools, and structures that make people converge and strategize. Combining all the above in a coherent and generative flow is a passion and a mission for me.
A selection of methods. From left to right, top to bottom: resources mapping, Letters from the Future, quick prototyping, participatory mapping, carrying materials for a visioning workshop in rural Finland.
A selection of methods. From top to bottom: resource mapping, Letters from the Future, rapid prototyping, participatory mapping, transporting materials for a visioning workshop in rural Finland.
Methods
Below is a list of participatory, co-creative, and qualitative methods I have used in my work, both online and in presence.
Backcasting
Causal Layered Analysis (CLA)
Circle of Objects
Delphi survey
Focus group discussion
Future Wheel
Future headlines (with or without collage)
Guided meditation
Haiku harvest
Letters from the future
Open Space Technology
Participatory mapping
Photo elicitation
Photovoice
Questionnaires
Quick prototyping
Resources mapping
Role play
Seeds of Good Anthropocene
Semi-structured interviews
Silent conversation
Stakeholder mapping and analysis
Storytelling
SWOT analysis
Three Horizons
Timeline of change
Venn diagram
World Cafè
And many other creative and arts-based methods from our Re.imaginarydatabase, and from other sources of inspiration.
A selection of methods. From left to right, top to bottom: Vision Tree, collage materials for Headlines from the Future, workshop session with Photovoice, values mapping on system’s dimensions, households survey questionnaires in rural China.
A selection of methods. From top to bottom: Vision Tree, collage materials for Headlines from the Future, workshop session with Photovoice, value mapping on system dimensions, household survey questionnaires in rural China.