In designInnovation
INNOVATION LAB
Frame useful questions, test assumptions and turn early ideas into working prototypes.
BECOMING LABS
Stay with
what matters.
Some challenges cannot be solved in a workshop. Labs bring lived experience, serious questions, useful expertise and practical experimentation into one continuing field of work.
Explore the fieldsWHAT A LAB IS
Not a theme.
A shared commitment.
A BECOMING Lab is a long-term community of people willing to understand a challenge, test responses and make the learning useful beyond themselves.
Members may enter through research, lived experience, technical practice, community work or a question they cannot ignore. They stay because the issue deserves more than a single event—and because progress becomes stronger when knowledge moves across countries, disciplines and generations.
SIX FIELDS
Different challenges.
One discipline: move the work.
In developmentClimate
CLIMATE FUTURES LAB
Read changing climate and energy futures. Develop relevant capabilities. Build locally grounded responses.
Seeking founding contributorsScience + Technology
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY LAB
Connect research, technical practice and emerging tools to real needs—and make knowledge travel.
PlannedHealth
HEALTH FUTURES LAB
Explore healthier futures, unequal access and the capabilities communities need to respond.
PlannedCivic Futures
CIVIC FUTURES LAB
Practise participation, public imagination and democratic action beyond the language of leadership.
Exploratory fieldLearning + Livelihoods
LEARNING & WORK FUTURES LAB
Rethink the path from learning to capability, dignified work and a life young people can shape.
NEW FIELD TO EXPLORE
The route from learning to work is breaking.
Let’s redesign the crossing.
Young people are told to collect more education, more skills and more credentials—yet the path into meaningful work remains unequal, opaque or absent.
The Learning & Work Futures Lab explores the transitions between education, capability, livelihood and contribution. It asks what young people need when old signals lose value, technology changes the work itself and geography still decides who gets seen.
What would it take for a young person to turn what they can learn into work they can value—and a life they can shape?
Find the break.
Map where capable young people lose access, direction, confidence or opportunity.
Rethink the signal.
Explore how real capability can become visible beyond pedigree, location and polished CVs.
Build the bridge.
Test practical pathways between learning, experience, networks and dignified work.
Make it travel.
Share models that others can adapt without erasing culture, place or local reality.
THE DISTINCTION
Programs end.
The work of a Lab continues.
HOW A LAB MOVES
Observe deeply.
Test modestly.
Share honestly.
A Lab does not begin with a grand solution. It begins with a better relationship to the problem.
Start with reality.
Bring together lived experience, evidence, local knowledge and alternative futures.
Make it workable.
Narrow a complex challenge into a question people can investigate and act on together.
Build before certainty.
Create a small experiment, prototype, session, inquiry or local response—and watch what happens.
Let knowledge move.
Share what worked, what failed, what changed and what another community can use.
WHAT LEAVES THE ROOM
Not another
conversation.
Every Lab works toward something that can be used, tested, challenged or carried forward.
A clearer question
A problem defined closely enough to reveal where action could matter.
A tested response
A small intervention with evidence of what moved—and what did not.
A reusable asset
A guide, map, tool, method, dataset, prototype or learning resource.
A stronger contributor
Someone more capable of researching, building, convening and helping others act.
A public learning
An honest account that makes insight available beyond the original group.
A next experiment
A more intelligent question—and a reason for the work to continue.
A LIVING PORTFOLIO
The next Lab can begin with the network.
A new Lab begins when people are ready to stay with a challenge—not simply discuss it once.
Future fields may emerge around food and land, peace and belonging, or culture and story. Each starts with a community of contributors, a question worth returning to and one practical experiment that can teach us something real.
Bring a field worth exploring