Co-Designing Transition Experiments

Setting up real-world learning environments to support transition processes

This tool offers practical guidelines and a printable card deck for co-designing transition experiments. A transition experiment (TE) is defined as an ‘innovation project with a societal challenge as a starting point for learning aimed at contributing to a transition’, with learning as the core strategy for addressing these challenges (Van den Bosch, 2010: 58).

Transition experiments are one of several instruments within Transition Management (TM), a governance approach aimed at transforming unsustainable systems across three interconnected levels: 1) structure: institutional and physical setting, 2) culture: prevailing perspective, and 3) practices: rules, routines, and habits (Loorbach, Rotmans & Kemp, 2016).

Drawing on seven years of experience teaching Placemaking courses, the UvA Placemaking team developed a pedagogical method to support learning in co-designing transition experiments. This method emphasises creating learning environments beyond the classroom and engaging external stakeholders to gather experiential feedback on potential innovations.

The Co-Designing Transition Experiments card deck helps students facilitate the co-design process by applying key transition criteria that help strengthen the experiment’s transformative potential, feasibility, measurability and strategic value, building on the work of Loorbach, Rotmans & Kemp (2016).

Learning outcome

  • The student is able to mobilise key stakeholders in designing a transition experiment