Design as catalyst for change entails working with uncertainty, venturing into new ways of knowing and complex transdisciplinary collaborations. This can be provocative, messy, awkward - even frightening, since it involves an element of risk-taking. The risks may concern asserting epistemological positions lower down a normative hierarchy, saying no to a conventionally termed strong financial proposition, or exploring a new visual language. 

Using metadesign frameworks and tools, this workshop starts from concrete examples of risky moments to explore how design situations and cultures can be more allowing and supportive of risk-taking. Specifically, the workshop uses an approach of ‘languaging’, manifested through drawing, writing, film-making and embroidery, to probe and reimagine risk-taking. The workshop draws on insights into risk-taking from the Swedish-Japanese research project Transnational Living Lab for Active Ageing, the development project BOOST - proposals for housing at intersection of migrants, students and ageing population, and Design + Change - the development and implementation of visionary new degree programmes. The facilitators have long experience from setting up safe spaces for risky explorations across sectors, internationally. Workshop participants will leave with a framework and process to explore risk-taking co-creatively, new narratives of risk-taking in change work and a resource of examples of risk-taking.