Design for Life capabilities enquiry

What are Design for Life capabilities?

A capability is something a person or entity can do because of the values, attitudes, knowledge, and skills they have.

To futureproof our world and deliver against critical sustainability targets, we need to re-learn the interconnection and interdependence between our economic, social, and ecological systems. Design for Life capabilities are the ways of thinking, doing and being needed for changemakers to live and work in ways that contribute to thriving people, places and planet.

What will our enquiry achieve?

Our Design for Life capabilities enquiry will collectively surface these capabilities and test what they mean for how we shape the future workforce to deliver transformative action in our ever-changing world.

Where we are

We have convened a global coalition to lead this enquiry in the first half of 2023. This will be a key opportunity to shape the enquiry and feed into the development and testing of the capabilities framework.

We are also looking to partner with other key organisations willing to support and fund the enquiry.

A collective journey to a shared vision

Our enquiry aims to:

1. Highlight, celebrate, and connect the breadth of existing and ongoing work across the system of capabilities and capacity development around the world.
2. Bring together global stakeholders across businesses and the education and learning system to define a shared vision of next practice.

Our approach

• Bring a participative approach across all our work, bringing the system ‘into the room’. In our experience, the process is often as important as the outputs.
• Prioritise engaging underrepresented groups, recognising the importance of rebalancing the conversation to achieve social impact.
• Use thoughtful process design and futures approaches to help groups step out of the current day reality and explore the future with imagination.