Process & Methodology
Introducing the RESPACE process
Starting in April 2024 and over a period of 10 months, a RESPACE Team (23 members) came together to reimagine possible futures and strategise toward building equitable global spaces and infrastructures for peacebuilding. This took place through four main workshops where the team came together both virtually and in person.
Our core methodology for the reimagining initiative is the Transformative Scenarios Process (TSP). The scenarios represent stories of what could happen in the world if we follow different trajectories to promote peace. These do not all present a positive outlook for a future, peaceful world. However, one or two of these scenarios may contain the foundations to develop new and equitable ways of collaborating for peace and become stepping stones towards an alternative and desirable future.
The four phases of the RESPACE process:
Discovery Phase: The RESPACE Team explored global trends and dynamics and shared their varying perspectives on the status-quo of the system and where current trajectories for change could lead.
Scenario Phase: Based on this, they developed a few scenarios that describe those possible futures for peace and peacebuilding. They themselves chose which futures were relevant to explore more in-depth through the scenario building.
Strategies Phase: They strategised and planned measures, alliances, and collaborative actions for realising equitable spaces and infrastructures for peace.
Collaborative Action Phase: They spread out and help these visions find fertile ground. The participants activate their own networks and realms of influence to share their visions and move towards them.
Between the first and third phases, the design functions somewhat akin to a beehive: The participants came together to explore and create, then moved out to collect more food for thought and came back together to share and further reimagine and later strategise.
The fourth phase, on the other hand, sees the RESPACE Team members disperse like the pappus of a dandelion in the wind. These parachute seeds will always find cracks to grow in and will spread widely even to unfertile grounds, they grow new initiatives and networks of themselves.
The RESPACE Team engages its networks in a guided process of mutual co-creation as a community to create multiple trajectories to alternative infrastructures and space for peace and equity. At each step of the process, the team members reach out to their networks, including ‘unusual suspects,’ to to generate input and ideas for the process as it moves forward.
The RESPACE process is not bound by rigid timelines and workshop outlines; instead, it evolves, self-replicates, and is collectively owned.
