Cooperation to find an inner core for innovation and green transition
IN ENGLISH BELOW
In February 2024, the first workshop in existential sustainability was held by Lovisa Nyman and Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg from Centre for Theology and Religious Studies onto Lund University with Future by Lund and representatives of the Romanian Cultural Organization PLAI from in Timișoara and the Master's Programme for Urban Managers at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (WhA). The workshop is part of the newly launched Innovation Portfolio Approach (IPA) project run by Future by Lund, HvA, PLAI and Lund University.
In the European project Innovation Portfolio Approach (IPA) The actors work together to see how a portfolio mindset can be used in societal transformation and innovation work. Many of today's challenges are so complex that they need to be solved through many different and joint efforts of several actors, and one way to work towards long-term solutions is to coordinate a development portfolio with selected partners and together create a common direction. Portfolios, for example, start from a challenge or an opportunity. The aim of the workshop was to strengthen the capacity of intermediaries working with the cultural and creative sectors to contribute to green transition based on existential sustainability and to use our worldview and values to drive change.
Existential sustainability is a concept that has been developed by Lund University since 2021, and encompasses the idea that creative, cultural and artistic practices as well as philosophical and spiritual applications have a unique ability to open up the human capacity for change. Therefore, the IPA project wants to use the cultural and creative industries to deepen the existential perspective of the human being so that the earth's resources can be used in a better way.
- The climate problem is not fundamentally about technology, because technically speaking, most of it is already possible, but the most serious problem is about human behavior, says Sharona Ceha of the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. Now we also need to learn more about how to think and behave. As a researcher, I study how we can communicate to reach people who are not so interested or concerned about the pressing problems of climate change.
As an introduction to the IPA project, the participants gathered in Lund to discuss what existential sustainability means, how to strike a balance between the individual and a shared vision, and what values to encourage to initiate change. The question was how we can insert value works to reinforce innovation, development and change and create understanding, participation and drive.
- We were invited to open the discussion about what existential sustainability is, says Lovisa Nyman. It is a complex concept that will not be fully defined, but we provided slightly different threads and inputs that will allow participants to discuss further and find out what they mean by existential sustainability in the project. I was surprised by how quickly one can arrive at the difficult questions, and that's because everyone in the project is already very reflective.
The participants were also satisfied with the work.
- The important thing is that we have adapted to and contributed to the definition of existential sustainability as during the project we will add more layers that create more meaning, says Andreea Iager-Tako at PLAI. This process raises the question of why we are undertaking the project and why it is important for us to do so. The conscious and ethical use of resources, including our time, our efforts and our mental capacity along with other resources in the project, is essential.
An important question was how the cultural and creative industries can help strengthen our capacity for change and create the inner awareness necessary for the green transition. One challenge is our tendency to think in dichotomies:
- We humans tend to analyze things as an either/or, continues Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg. We are happy to discuss and think with the help of binary things - either it is like this or the other way around. During the workshop, we highlighted classic divisions such as nature-culture, body-soul, rationality-emotions, freedom-dependence and man-woman. When we enter into complex transformations, it is important to be able to keep both alive and alive, because when we look at what are passable routes for a major transformation, it is important to get many people on the train. It's important to remember and sometimes you might have to be the boring one in the room and say 'isn't it more complex than that? '.
The meaning of words and how to tell the common story are key ingredients.
- For me, it is very important to reflect and understand terms in depth, because “buzz words” can be a big obstacle, says Andreea Iager-Tako. Words can be drained of meaning or used superficially, for example to hide something that is actually done in an old way.
Discussions on existential sustainability will of course continue during the project and will also develop in the researchers' continued work at Lund University.
- The conversation we had during the workshop is a counterculture against the very simplistic conversation in social media, which tends to break us down, says Johanna Gustavsson Lundberg. I get hopeful when I see that we can come from actually quite different directions and have this kind of a conversation -- it's meaning-making and is really existential sustainability in practice.
The IPA project now continues to formulate and try out how the project team can practice existential sustainability. The next step will be to work with the application of the concept in the development of innovation portfolios and methodology for building portfolios.
Here's what some of the participants thought:
Andreea Iager-Tako from the cultural organization PLAI in Timișoara.
- PLAI started in 2006 as a grassroots initiative by young people to start co-creating community solutions, undertaking place-making and starting events. Plai Festival is a festival for the community and for the world, while promoting volunteering and empowering young people to write their own stories. Our city of Timișoara is historically an ethnically very diverse place but also the birthplace of many very niche cultural initiatives, such as an electronic music scene, Romania's first rock festival and an underground festival. Since its inception, PLAI has worked to attract the world to our city, as when we organized the first world music festival in Romania. We support “doers” of all kinds regardless of their areas of activity and started with festivals, but then realised that these people need a place to meet, share experiences and collaborate with other sectors. Then we started Ambasada, a place where “doers” can come and feel that it is their own. The creative and non-profit organizations receive free infrastructure and a place where they can meet each other but also companies and government institutions from Timișoara and on an international level. While developing Ambasada, we also developed other festivals, concepts and events, such as a “mixed arts” festival, a jazz festival, an educational program for poets, a summer jazz school and other custom projects.
In the IPA project, PLAI will be involved in creating portfolios and providing the project with practical stories and actions to work with and follow.
- I see that we need a compass to create ethical, sound and valuable milestones that can then be landmarks as we navigate towards a certain future. I look forward to working together in this open framework, with our different starting points, to completing this intricate puzzle.
What are you most looking forward to in the IPA project?
- For me, it is important to be a partner in a small but very valuable consortium where we focus on learning together and sharing experiences. We create safe spaces together, and I think that's important for creating something that lasts. I don't know what the end product will be but I will enjoy the journey which I think will be very generous from all perspectives.
Sharona Ceha at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam
Sharona Ceha works as a teacher and lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam. As a teacher in the Master's program in Urban Management, she works, among other things, with the complexity of the city and what competencies people need to improve the city. In addition, she is a teacher for the new master program Climate Psychology and Climate Behavior. She also researches how we can communicate to reach people who are not interested in or do not care about the problems caused by climate change and works in this, among other things, together with meteorologists.
- We are in the midst of chaos within many of our systems and the way we used to do things no longer works. We need change management to see what works. The transition that seems to work best right now is the transition to fossil-free and we could study this journey to see how to make transition systems grow.
For Sharona Ceha, the idea of existential sustainability is not really anything new.
- I have always thought about this but did not call it existential sustainability. I have realized that if we are to succeed in changing the world, we must start by changing ourselves. Seven years ago, I began a journey of losing weight to live more healthily. I also no longer divide my life into work and leisure — now everything I do is part of life, and I am a person who has made an inner choice to make the world better.
What are you looking forward to in the IPA project?
- In this project, we look at what competencies the intermediaries need to make the transformation work and bind together different layers of society. I'm in the project to get inspiration. In recent years I have worked with Andreea Iager-Tako and subsequently met Birgitta Persson and Katarina Scott from Future by Lund online. We're all the sort of people who want to be at the forefront of this development. They will inspire me and I will share my thanks with them. It is important that we do not all try to invent the wheel ourselves, but that we learn from each other. I combine the skills of teaching urban managers with my own vision of existential sustainability. One outcome of the project will definitely be for me to take this to my students and try to get it into the curriculum.
Photo: The big picture; Photo: Andreea Iager-Tako, other images Future by Lund
IPA is a project of the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme ERA-NET Cofund UrbanTransformation Capacities (ENUTC). From the Swedish side, it is the Swedish Energy Agency that decides on support for the Swedish participation.
En Inglés
This translation is mainly made by translation tools.
Together to find an inner core for innovation and green transition
Lovisa Nyman and Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg from the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University helped Future by Lund with partners from HvA (Amsterdam) and PLAI (Timisoara) to understand the concept of existential sustainability. O progetto IPA, l'approche de la portfolio-innovativa, va funciona con métodos de la entrega, a métodos de desarrollo y como usar o approches mundial y valores para proveção e cambio verde. Held in Februari, je prvi IPA:s prvi v existential sustainability, a concept that Lund University has been working with since 2021.
In February 2024, a first workshop exploring the concept of existential sustainability was held by Lovisa Nyman and Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg from the Centre for Theology and Religious Studies at Lund University with Future by Lund and representatives of the Romanian cultural organization PLAI from Timișoara and the Master's Program for Urban Managers at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). The workshop is part of the work within a newly started project Innovation Portfolio Approach (IPA) run by Future by Lund, HvA, PLAI and Lund University.
In the European project Innovation Portfolio Approach (IPA), the actors are working together to see how a portfolio approach can be used for innovation and societal transformation. Today many of our challenges are so complex that they must be solved through many different and joint efforts including several actors. One way is to create a development portfolio with selected partners and together create a common direction. Portfolios are based on a self-defined challenge or an opportunity, a scope. Págál v a a a a a a.
Existential sustainability is a concept that has been developed by Lund University since 2021, and includes the idea that creative, cultural, and artistic practices as well as philosophical and spiritual applications have a unique ability to open the human capacity for change. Perché, the IPA project wants to use the cultural and creative industries to deepen the human existential perspective so that the earth's resources can be used in a better way.
Sharona Ceha at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (hVA):
“The climate problem is not fundamentally about technology, because technically most things are already possible, but the most serious problem is people's behavior. Now we need to learn more about how we should think and behave. As a researcher, I study how we can communicate to people who are not so interested or bothered about the urgent problems of climate change.”
As an introduction to the IPA project, the participants gathered in Lund to discuss what existential sustainability means, how to get a balance between the individual and a common vision, and how to use values to encourage to start a change. Het bericht is om vi kan integreren voor het innovatie, ontwikkeling en verschap en creëren, ondersteuning en ontwikkeling.
Lovisa Nyman zegt:
“We were invited to open the discussion about what existential sustainability is. It is a complex concept that will not be fully defined, but we provided some different threads and inputs that will make it possible for the participants to discuss further and find out what they mean by existential sustainability in the project. I was surprised by how quickly you can get to the difficult questions, and that's because everyone in the project is already very reflective.”
The participants were also satisfied with the work.
Andreea Iager-Tako at PLAI:
““O importante é que nos ha alimentado y contribuir a la definición de sustainabilidad existential como se durante el progetto adauga más strato que generar más significado.
This process raises the question of why we are carrying out the project and why it is important for us to do it. It is important to have a conscious and ethical use of resources, including our time, our efforts, and our mental capacity along with other resources in the project.”
Una. One challenge is our tendency to think in dichotomies.
Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg continues:
“We humans tend to analyze things as an either/or. We like to discuss and think with the help of binary things - either it's like this or the other way around. During the workshop, we highlighted classic divisions such as nature-culture, body-soul, rationality-emotions, freedom-dependence and man-woman. När vi,,. It's important to remember this and sometimes be the boring one in the room saying, “Isn't it more complex than that?”.
O significado de palabras e como recomendar la historia comenta significativos.
Andreea Iager-Tako zegt:
“For me, it is very important to reflect and understand terms in depth, because “buzz words” can be a major obstacle. The words can be drained of meaning or used in a superficial way, for example to hide something that is done in an old way.”
Discussions on existential sustainability will of course continue during the project and will also be further developed in the researchers' continued work at Lund University.
Johanna Gustafsson Lundberg zegt:
“The conversation we had during the workshop is a counterculture to the very simplistic conversation in social media, which tends to break us down. I'm hopeful when I see that we can come from quite different backgrounds and have this type of conversation — it's a meaning-making process and it's really existential sustainability in practice.”
O progetto IPA é continuar a formulário e tentar como o equipo de progetto puede practicar existential sustainabilidad en relacionado a inovação. Nextstep will be to work with the application of the concept in the development of innovation portfolios and methodology for building portfolios.
Here's what some of the participants had to say:
Andreea Iager-Tako from the cultural organization PLAI in Timisoara.
“PLAI started in 2006 as a grassroots initiative of youth to start co-creating community solutions, placemaking and events. Our city of Timisoara is historically an ethnically very diverse place but also the birthplace of many very niched cultural initiatives, such as an electronic music scene, Romania's first rock festival and underground festival. In the same spirit, PLAI the festival is a world and communities celebrating festival, while promoting volunteering and empowering youth to write their own stories. Since its inception, PLAI has worked to attract the world to our city, like when we organized the first world music festival in Romania. We support doers of all kinds regardless of their fields of activity and started with festivals, but then realized that these people need a place to meet, share experiences and collaborate with other sectors. That's when we started EMBASSY, a place where doers can come and feel like it's their own. Het creatieve en non-profit organisaties werd een gratis infrastructuur en een plaats te connecteren, maar ook met bedrijven en governmentalinstituties van Timisoara en een internationale level. At the same time as we developed AMBASADA, we also developed other festival concept events, such as a mixed arts festival, a jazz festival, a training program for poets, a summer jazz school and other custom projects.”
Nel progetto IPA, PLAI will be involved in creating portfolios and providing the project with practical stories and actions to work with and follow.
I see that we need a compass to create ethical, healthy, and valuable milestones that can then be landmarks as we navigate towards the future. I'm looking forward to working together in this open framework, with our different starting points, to complete this intricate puzzle.”
What are you most looking forward to in the IPA project?
“For me, it is important to be a partner in a small but very valuable consortium where we focus on learning together and sharing experiences. We create safe spaces together, and I think it's important to create something that lasts. I don't know exactly what the final product will be, but I will enjoy the ride which I think will be very generous from all perspectives.”
Sharona Ceha is at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam
Sharona Ceha works as a teacher and lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences in Amsterdam. As a teacher in the master's program in Urban Management, she works with the complexity of the city and the skills that people need to improve the city. In addition, she is a teacher for the new master's program Climate Psychology and Climate Behavior. She also researches how we can communicate to people who are not interested or bothered about the problems caused by climate change together with meteorologists, among others.
“We are in the midst of chaos in many of our systems and the way we used to do things no longer work. We need transition management to understand what works. La transizione che se sempre funziona, è la transizione a fossili-free, e podemos studiar esta procura para ver como obtener también altri sistemas de transição para crear.”
For Sharona Ceha, the idea of existential sustainability is not really something new.
“I've always thought about this, but I haven't called it existential sustainability. I have realized that if we are to succeed in changing the world, we must start by changing ourselves. Seven years ago, I started a journey of losing weight to live more healthily. I also no longer divide my life into work and leisure — now everything I do is a part of life, and I am a person who has made an inner choice to make the world a better place.”
What are you looking forward to in the IPA project?
“In this project, we look at what skills the intermediaries need in order for them to make and support the transformation work tying different layers of society together. I'm involved in the project to get inspiration. In recent years, I have worked with Andreea Iager-Tako and then with Birgitta Persson and Katarina Scott from Future by Lund online. We are all the same kind of people who strives to be at the forefront supporting this development. Vamos inspirar, y compartir mi pensar com os. It is important that we do not all try to reinvent the wheel ourselves, but that we learn from each other. I combine the skills to train urban managers with my own vision of existential sustainability. One result of the project will definitely be that I will take this to my students and try to get it into the curriculum.”