STEPS Summer school

Last week I attended the STEPS Summer School, an amazing 2 week immersive summer school in Brighton which explored transformative pathways for sustainability. The course brought together 45 participants from 23 different countries and has us walkshopping, dancing, debating, enacting and navigating our way through complex issues related to natural resource governance, power, politics, innovation and transformation.

Over the two weeks we were encouraged to share our research, experience and engage with the centre's "Pathways approach". The penultimate day was a participant-led conference which required us to think out the box and use any media/ way to highlight some of the issues we are dealing with as researchers and practitioners. One group used a ingenious way to highlight the complexity and intersections of issues we deal with in our multiple roles by providing us each with a ball of string that we had to pass through different chairs/ beams/ bars in order to reach our desired goal of sustainability. At each point we had to make a decision about different values, methods, methodologies, topics, stakeholders etc- as you can see- we ended up in a total tangle along the way, but most of us made it before our resources (string) ran out.

Attendance at the summer school reaffirmed my commitment to doing transformative research underpinned by a deep desire for social-environmental justice and provided many points of reflection and learning along the way. It also helped me meet amazingly like-minded people from all corners of the world so watch this space for news of exciting new collaborations!