What do we really need today as change-makers? This question kept coming back to me as I thought about the direction of this year’s conference. It is already the tenth edition, a stage that has seen many implemented solutions and approaches to creating sustainable practices. What new insights can we bring? Especially in a way that leaves each of us with the feeling: I too, in my role and reality, can contribute to realizing the values that matter to me.
I often return to the question of the changing role and skills of designers, from creating things to supporting processes of change. Innovation is not just about a new product or service. It is about designing transitions, moments of change that open up space for new ways of doing, learning, and collaborating. And grounding these transitions through small actions and experiments.
A major inspiration for me has been the reflections of Ida Persson within Design Shifts, where the focus moves from “creating things” to “creating conditions.” I also remember Simon Höher’s presentation on “Unthinkable Future” at this year’s Future Days conference. He asked: how do we design for a future we cannot yet imagine? One of his potential answers, levers for change, was “designing doubts” and “creating enabling conditions”, so that unpredictable change can take place.
Similar ideas can be found in the emerging field of Transition Design. This approach to design does not focus only on creating individual products or services but on supporting long-term systemic and social change. It is again about designing transitions, moments and processes that allow people, organizations, and systems to move from their current state to a more desired, sustainable one. Transition Design is design for transformation, using methods from foresight, systems thinking, designing interventions and experiments.
These reflections and approaches highlight the importance of both imagining futures and testing small steps here and now. Especially, in a world where we have quarterly KPIs to meet on one hand, and a vision of building a new reality on the other. How can we balance what is urgent today with what we hope to bring about tomorrow? Sustainability is not just a goal, it is the ability to maintain movement toward a better world. And this is not always easy, especially when the surrounding reality does not support sustaining hope, and dominant narratives about the future increasingly lean toward dystopia.
So how can we strengthen each other to ensure that these changes can really happen? I hope this year’s edition will be a space where we can explore together what it truly means to sustain the ability to change.
Karolina Michałkowska
Program Director
