Sustainable Business Model Canvas
- Imagining, designing and teaching regenerative futures is challenging. Educators often lack
approaches that allow them to address the complexities of global challenges through new
narratives, which make space for the imagination of desirable futures. Commonly in education,
we retell the story of an apocalyptic future when speaking about global challenges such as
biodiversity degradation and climate change. This narrative, which focuses on the risks and
dangers of global environmental change, is built on the assumption that the induced fear might
lead to action.
This toolkit supports educators who wish to follow a different route. It is based on the assumption
that “we can’t create what we cannot imagine” (quote by Lucile Clifton). Consequently, imagining,
designing, and teaching regenerative futures is the basis and starting point for actualizing
them. The beginning of fundamental change is often hard to track because it first takes place
in our minds. Visible, large-scale change arises from invisible, wild ideas and imaginations.
According to the philosopher and educator John Dewey, imagination is “the ability to look at
things as if they could be otherwise”. This ability to ask “what if?” is central to envisioning and
enacting better lives. The lack of broad-scale action towards regenerative ways of living can
be seen as a lack of imagination to create shared visions of an alternative future. Collectively
envisioning desirable futures provides the motivation and guidance for change, or as the poet
Rainer Maria Rilke put it: “the future enters into us, in order to transform itself in us, long before
it happens.”
This toolkit introduces a broad variety of creative and arts-based methods for regeneration
and transformation that can be used in various educational settings. It harnesses the power
of creative and arts-based practices, which are increasingly seen as a means of expanding
future imaginaries and supporting the development of new scenarios of transformative change.
The toolkit was developed within the COST Action SHiFT Social Sciences and Humanities
for social transformation and climate change as an initiative of Working Group 3: Creative
Practices and Outreach. It comprises a selection of 68 creative methods brought together
in a collaborative effort by 124 authors from 31 countries and 6 continents. Its intention is
to comprise a valuable resource for educators, teachers, lecturers, community workers, and
change-makers who are aiming to empower their learners while providing competencies in
regenerative design, climate action, futures thinking, human-nature connection, wellbeing and
community engagement.
This toolkit is more than a collection of methods but a call to action and a comprehensive
resource developed through the synergistic efforts of contributors worldwide.