Over the past 15 years, several practice-oriented degree programmes focusing on socio-ecological transformation have been established (Eco-Social Design, Transformation Design, Social Design, Transformation Studies, Social Design or similar study courses, including likewise engaged programs coming from art or architecture). In these overwhelming times of crisis, conflict and collapse, students and alumni want to join forces to increase our transformative power through mutuality, joint strategies and actions, while at the same time being able to earn a living. ‘Hopeful Design Union’ is the working title for this. The next online meeting is 14 January 2026 at 17:00 to 18:30, CET more below.
The lingering process has been catalysed with the Joining Forces Workshop on 11 May at the By Design and by Disaster Conference 2025. In the follow-up online meeting on 8 October 2025, we decided to start regional circles and overarching assembly. Regional circles meet regularly, e.g. monthly. While the trans-local assembly of all members takes place three times a year online and once on site, for example as part of the By Design or by Disaster Conference or another relevant and accessible event. Additionally, we setup a Mattermost team to get organised online, and share activities, funding opportunities, skills and ideas for common projects, needs and offers, and anything that matters to enable transformative work as a livelihood. In the long-term we want to co-create a stable, decentral and radically democratic organisation.
So far, 3 regional circles are in the stage of initialisation. Get in touch with the initialisers if you are interested to join. In case you want to initialise another regional group, just go ahead and get in touch with kris.krois@unibz.it.
Northeast Italy (Trentino-South Tyrol, …)
Initialiser ➔ Shirin Kiefer, Julia Tebbe, Simon Wallis
Switzerland (Lucerne, …)
Initialiser ➔ Amalia
Northern Germany (Hamburg, Brunswick, Berlin, …)
Initialiser ➔ Arved Bünning
Join the Mattermost team via this invite link. Mattermost (MM) is similar to Slack, but free and open source. Download the app here. (Server: mattermost.lu).
Channels:
- PIAZZA – messages that matter for the Union
- BLOG – everything interesting
- REGIONAL CIRCLES – for each circle, a channel
After opening MM you will see the channel PIAZZA. Under “Find Channels” you can get into all other channels. MM introduction and support sessions can be offered in regional circles and our next online meeting, if needed.
The next online meeting is 14 January 2026 at 17:00 to 18:30, CET. To get the meeting link and much more, join the Mattermost team via this invite link.
Image: Stendhal55, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons