This workshop will create a space for discussion on environmental politics and its impact on design for sustainable transitions. It will help participants identify different sustainability discourses; create a space for reflection on how these discourses influence design practice; and consider the environmental and social implications of different discourses. The workshop will do this work by encouraging knowledge sharing, reflection and interpretative mapping in a participatory space where individuals will create their own discourse maps.
This work is informed by my research “Mapping Climate Communication” conducted at the Centre for Science and Technology Policy Research (CSTPR) in the Cooperative Institute for Environmental Sciences (CIRES), the University of Colorado, Boulder. With this research project I developed a discourse mapping method based on the discourse analysis method of political scientists and sustainability scholars. Using my own work as an example, I will facilitate a process that will enable participants to create new discourse maps reflecting their own ideas and agendas.