Blick über die hügelige grüne Landschaft im Umland von Kapstadt unter einem Himmel mit Wolken und einem großen Regenbogen.
Project

Taking a walk for sustainability

  • Topics: Sustainability, Diversity, Ecological Justice, and Climate Change
  • Key Actors: Researcher and Conference Participants
  • Outputs: Field Estimeter
  • Events: ARUA Climate Change and Inequalities Symposium 2023, Capetown; DeGrowth Conference 2024, Pontevedra
  • Timespan: February 2023

Want to hear how can participatory formats promote innovative exchange at international conferences and make diverse perspectives visible?

Listen to the audio walk.

The ARUA Climate Change and Inequalities Symposium

Foto des Campus, auf dem die Konferenz abgehalten wurde. Im Vordergrund sieht man eine Schranke für Autos, dahinter ragt die moderne Fassade eines Gebäudes empor.

The international climate conference in Cape Town brought together many, many scientists, primarily from African countries, to address the pressing challenges of the climate crisis and its associated inequalities: from leveling access to energy, water and waste disposal to unequal protection against the effects of extreme weather events and the resulting disasters.

High Complexity

PowerPoint-Präsentation mit zahlreichen, schwer lesbaren kleinen Zahlen, die trockene Fakten darstellen.

Specialist conferences like the ARUA must pack a lot of complex content into a dense program. This often makes it difficult for participants to actively immerse themselves in the topics, which in turn impairs  exchange and understanding. In response to this dilemma, we developed the interactive audio walk and the field estimator method. The audio walk encouraged participants to contribute their perspectives actively and thus integrate the complexity of their views into the conference discourse.

Unusual Insights

Finger halten eine Postkarte mit der Bezeichnung 'Field-Estimeter'. Die Karte hat ein längliches Loch, markiert mit '100%' oben und '0%' unten. Durch das Loch ist der Himmel und am unteren Rand ein grüner Horizont zu erkennen, was auf eine niedrige Schätzung hinweist.

With the Field Estimeter, we offered participants a means of visualizing expectations and insights.

A mood board was created, via Padlet, to which everyone contributed; this brought to the fore participant diversity and the oft-overheard voices of soft-spoken or reticent individuals. This method shed light on the wide variety of cultural perspectives, but also revealed how exclusion and inequality are perceived differently. Our integrative approach promotes a multi-layered and more inclusive research practice.

KITE Project Team

Miriam Lahusen, Florian Sametinger, Alexander Müller-Rakow, and Lina Audehm

And now?

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Miriam Lahusen (she/her)

miriam@kite.design

Miriam is a co-founder and managing director at KITE. In her role as CFO (Chief Financial Officer), she is responsible for the company's finances. Her focus areas include participatory methodology and social sustainability.

She began her career in textile design, later specializing in sustainable design research at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK) and the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). She studied at the Berlin Weißensee Academy of Art and completed semesters abroad in Casablanca and Havana. She graduated with a project on sustainable development in cooperation with the Institut Futur of the Free University (FU) Berlin.

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