Activating leverage points for a design skills transition in the UK: Insights from the Design for Planet Transition Learning Lab

As the urgency of transitions accelerates, so do demands placed on designers to contribute; yet research indicates there is a significant skills gap in key ‘green design skills’ across the UK’s design economy. The need for a green design skills transition as part of the UK’s green transitions will be crucial, and the Design for Planet Transition Learning Lab (‘the Lab’) has emerged in response to this need. The Lab’s activities are part of a Participatory Action Research Through Design project, and the Lab’s pilot—which includes the co-creation of learning prototypes—is the focus of this paper. The paper unpacks how the Lab operates as a systemic intervention: first by specifying the leverage points it seeks to intervene in and describing associated activities and timescales for intervention; and second, by describing how its assemblage constitutes a systemic intervention, by detailing how it meets each of the nine criteria from a ‘Multiplicity Framework’ for designing systemic interventions. Lastly the paper presents tensions and risks that are arising from the pilot and shares early insights that engage with the complexities of a skills transition and the Lab as an intervention.