Fostering Creative Agency as driver of Transformative Capacity

Transdisciplinary approaches related to global environmental change, such as resilience and transformative adaptation, use the word ‘transformation’ to refer to fundamental shifts in human and environmental interactions and feedbacks. In general, transformation is commonly applied to large-scale changes in whole societies, be they global, national or local. However, by drawing from their work in a South African municipality, transdisciplinary researchers Ziervogel, Cowen, & Ziniades (2015) suggest the idea of “transformative capacity”, applicable to individuals and organizations, as the capacity to transform in a deliberate, conscious way. This capacity to envision and effect deliberate changes to existing socioeconomic conditions can thus be said to be an essential component of sustainable and resilient transformation. Their socially oriented model for “transformative capacity” extends the existing concept of adaptive capacity and highlights the contribution of participants’ “creativity and agency” (Ziervogel et al., 2015).

Taking a closer look at the discourse and understandings of socio-environmental change and its related impacts within communities, Vanderlinden et al. (2020) link collaborative sensemaking to agency for adaptation through its ability to facilitate mutual learning across multiple intersecting boundaries of academic disciplines, geography, culture, language, education, etc. As a multi-sited global team, they reflect on their experience of transdisciplinary sensemaking as a “knowledge-based agency fostering exercise to facilitate change” (Vanderlinden et al., 2020). They argue for the clarification of ambiguity as a means to contribute to “increases in local agency, thus enhancing adaptive capacities” (ibid) among communities experiencing changes to their operating environment.

Vanderlinden and colleagues emphasize the place-based and community-centered nature of such collaborative sensemaking (Vanderlinden et al., 2020) and their work explicitly requires building bridges across geographies and cultures as well as communicating concepts across barriers to mutual learning. They echo Ziervogel et al.’s observation that “this work […] is about developing a commons where diverse knowledge and input is celebrated.” (Ziervogel et al., 2015). This review on the social aspects of people’s “ability to act to shape their future” (Vanderlinden et al., 2020) in a “deliberate and conscious way” (Ziervogel et al., 2015) i.e. their innovation capacity, introduces the motivating question for our social design projects: