Experimental spaces for supporting collective processes of deliberation and learning about sustainability challenges, and testing possible solutions, are of increasing interest. An example of these are T-Labs (‘transformation laboratories’), which are highly facilitated, multi-stakeholder spaces of interaction and dialogue aimed at co-creating new visions and practices for social-ecological sustainability in specific settings.
Three projects from the ISC-Transformations to Sustainability programme, T-Learning, Pathways and ACKnowl-EJ, have experimented with and reframed T-Labs, enriching our understanding of transformation itself, and of specific, complex social-ecological systems and their challenges in a wide range of contexts. This TransAction Workshop will bring together a wide range of participants to engage in dialogue, exchange of experience and exploration of the T-Lab framework, and to critically assess its potential to support processes of social-ecological transformation. The framework and its methods will be applied to two cases related to extractive sectors in Latin America. The first case is mining, drawing on the knowledge of the new T2S project Gold Matters. The second case is agriculture, building upon Pathways experience. The use of T-Lab processes has great potential for exploring the role of extractive sectors in enabling and advancing transformations to sustainability in Latin America. The workshop will propose tools not only to academics but also to policy makers, practitioners, activists and everyone who is interested in designing multi-stakeholder spaces of transformation in the context of sustainability challenges in general and in extractive sectors such as mining and agriculture in particular.
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